Cliodhna Hughes

Email: Cliodhna.Hughes@ed.ac.uk

Website: https://cliodhnahughes.github.io/

Research keywords: Voice technologies, queer voices, co-creation

Bio:

I developed a love for phonetics during my undergraduate linguistics degree, and a desire to apply these skills in the world led me to pursue a masters in speech and language technology. My MPhil thesis went beyond previously studied ways that physical vocal tract changes affect the voice, combining sociolinguistics, acoustics and perceptual studies to demonstrate that observed vocal changes may not only be due to the altered vocal tract shape, but also the altered social context. Inspired by this experience of bringing together knowledge and methods from several fields, in the CDT I am planning to use an interdisciplinary approach to co-design speech technologies with LGBTQ+ people.

PhD research:

Current voice technologies and development pipelines are not well suited to the needs of LGBTQ+ people. Speech data collection presents privacy and security risks, since the voice is inherently identifiable and particular vocal traits are culturally associated with particular genders and sexualities. Several current voice technologies also rely on a notion of “speaker identity”, which is assumed to be a relatively static phenomenon. This conceptualisation is in conflict with sociolinguistics research which demonstrates the voice to be highly flexible, and is further challenged by gender expansive speakers, many of whom seek options for changing their voice. I plan to work with LGBTQ+ people to learn more about the harms they face regarding the representation of their voice in data collection and technologies, with a view to designing systems and processes that are better suited to their needs.

Supervisors: Catherine Lai, Caterina Moruzzi, Kevin Guyan, Christian Ilbury