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Alice Ross

@alice-ross.bsky.social
168 followers 171 following 142 posts

Linguist, anarchist, reader, overthinker, cat enthusiast. PhD student at CSTR, University of Edinburgh: I research speech technology and its social impacts. ייִדיש אויך מעגלעך. alice-ross.github.io

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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
@scariadna.bsky.social is off to Sydney this week to present this work 🛫🐨🗣️ @interspeech.bsky.social goers, do not miss the queer & trans speech science and technology session! wish I could be there for that and @steven-bird.bsky.social keynote 🥹
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
one day i will figure out how to make multiple skeets display sensibly in a thread but apparently it is not this day 😮‍💨
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
שנה טובה / א גוט יאר to all observing. In Pirkei Avot, Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel tells us that the world stands on three things: justice, truth, and peace. I hope for 5787 that we can remember and return to those principles.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Talking with my hands on tour: here's what it looked like when I presented 'Sexualised synthetic personas encode & amplify gendered power asymmetries through voice' at Lavender Languages 32! Thanks to @lhlew.bsky.social 📸 What a wonderful opportunity to share our work, which you can check out here!
Alice, a tattooed human wearing a black silky shirt and rainbow lanyard, stands at a desk gesturing towards a projection (not shown)
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Idk I wish I were more eloquent about this stuff but we have fun and care a lot and sometimes my heart is so heavy!! And we go through this life once and it is so precious!!
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Reflecting and exhaling after an incredible 3 days of LAVLANG 32! Super thankful to my fellow organisers, all our wonderful presenters, sign language interpreters, and attendees who made this conference such a genuine pleasure to be a part of. 💜
A conference lanyard showing the logo of Lavender Languages & Linguistics 32: Queer (dis)belonging, hosted at the University of Edinburgh. The slightly creased badge lies on top of an orange notebook on an orange table.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I've just read @histoftech.bsky.social brilliant chapter 'Sexism is a feature, not a bug' in Your Computer Is On Fire, 2021 (I worked in the tech industry 2012-2021 and now study speech technology in society, so it was ABOUT TIME) and I'm all fired up! Such a good, clear, material explanation
An old photograph showing a white woman at a desk covered in papers, with a curious toddler standing at her side. The photo has a caption: Figure 6.1 Computer programmer Ann Moffatt sits at her kitchen table in 1966, writing code for the black box flight recorder for the Concorde. The baby in the photograph is now over fifty years old.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Sociophonetics for your ears!! @lhlew.bsky.social is on @becauselanguage.com podcast 😍 I'm downloading it now for my flight home from Copenhagen!
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
crying screaming throwing up (in a sedate, professional manner, naturally) 🥹
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
She's an icon, she's a legend, and she is the moment: @mixedlinguist.bsky.social today at Sociolx and AI conference with a brilliant presentation on socially prescriptive speech technologies & how the 'AI' industry depends on devaluing human language and language competence.
Linguist Nicole Holliday standing in front of a large projection screen. On the screen is a red and yellow graphic with the text: STOP FORCING A.I. INTO FUCKING EVERYTHING / NOBODY ASKED FOR IT / EVERYONE HATES IT.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Thrilled to be off to Copenhagen this week for Sociolinguistics and AI conference! I'll be sharing our CHI work on the social identities indexed in commercially available AI voices, & I'm really excited for the keynotes! one is from the brilliant and very inspiring @mixedlinguist.bsky.social 🤩
cip.ku.dk
Sociolinguistics and AI – University of Copenhagen
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Reposted by Alice Ross
Ambrose @ambrosia-engine.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Sharing again, the importance of this cannot be overstated. Our brains are shaped by what we do, and that includes the use of technology. We will remain in polycrisis so long as our collective capacities for thinking, imaginaries, and our values are eroded or reshaped by the tech we use.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
lads lads lads THE Dr. Nina Markl said I was smart and write beautifully 🥹 (in fact *I* am lucky to be HER friend!) but yeah go read my blog post thx! I have fond memories of working on it in a really lovely office in Berlin exactly 1 year ago, thinking "wow this world is beautiful but doomed" 🌞
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Four weeks to go until LAVLANG 32! The programme is UP and it's going to be brilliant! See you in Edinburgh!🪻🗣️🧏🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk
lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk
LavLang32 - Lavender Languages & Linguistics 32
2-4 September 2026: Queer (dis)belonging
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
It's always embarrassing to see AI slop anywhere, but it's more embarrassing when it's in a presentation at an academic conference during a stifling heatwave when we know the electricity-associated water footprint of a single AI-generated video is around 4.1 litres 🥵😡🤦 unu.edu/inweh/news/e...
unu.edu
Rising Emissions, Depleting Water and Vanishing Land—UN Scientists: AI Is Threatening Natural Resources for Billions
By 2030, AI's water use will match the needs of 1.3 billion people while its power use triples that of 650 million, UN University investigation warns
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Proud to present the preprint of our @interspeech.bsky.social accepted paper: exploring the personas invoked by "flirty" and "temptress" (Elevenlabs' labels, not ours!) AI voices with @scariadna.bsky.social @elinkanhov.bsky.social @catlai.bsky.social and Éva Székely 🎉 arxiv.org/abs/2606.21366
arxiv.org
Sexualised synthetic personas encode and amplify gendered power asymmetries through voice
This work examines sexualised AI-generated English-speaking voices offered by a popular commercial platform. New technologies may enable sexual empowerment and greater diversity in gender expression, ...
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
"Every individual must act as if the whole history of the world, of humanity itself, depends on them. Anything less [...] is itself a dehumanising force" Joseph Weizenbaum, 1976 vielen Dank @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social für die schöne Versammlung interdisziplinäre Wissenschaftler*innen! ❤️
A black and white photo of Alice (a heavily tattooed femme) looking only slightly awkward sitting next to the top half of pioneering computer scientist and philosopher of science Joseph Weizenbaum (1923–2008). Maybe Weizenbaum is a cardboard cut-out?
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
really good first day at #WIconf26, I particularly enjoyed brilliant contributions from @jkloiber.bsky.social and @rainermuehlhoff.bsky.social in the panel discussion - predatory delay! power-aware (as the only possible) ethics of AI! exploitation as a precondition for techno-fascism! 🔥
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
that was just luck though, I am mostly here for the @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social conference 🤩 and how timely, given that I think I may be more worried about AI and society than ever before right now? (note "worried about AI and society" has been my default mode for two years or so, obv)
a placard directing attendees to the 2026 Weizenbaum Conference on the topic "Generative AI and Society: What is at stake?", on a beautiful sunny tree-lined street in Berlin
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
feeling very lucky to have been able to catch the opening concert of poetry & music at the yiddish culture festival in my favourite city! thank you Shtetl Berlin and ב' ה'! ממש א מחיה!!
shtetlberlin.com
Shtetl Berlin e.V. | Yiddish Culture & Klezmer in Berlin | Germany
Shtetl Berlin is Berlin's grassroots home for Yiddish music and culture. Join us for year-round klezmer jams, Yiddish community singing, poetry readings, dance events, concerts, and community gatherin...
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
"Before anyone can credibly claim that they’ve solved an extraordinarily difficult engineering problem, I need to be confident that they have previously solved the many much simpler problems that precede the difficult problem" 🔥 bro we as a species are making Ted Chiang tap the sign
theatlantic.com
No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious
Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is absurd—and damning.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
ooh also this week I submitted my first proper full peer review (have only reviewed short abstracts before). I just looked back over it and realised I'd said 'thank you' twice. am I the sweetest reviewer or just tragically afflicted by britishness 🥴 (it was genuine though, love to see good work!)
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Delighted that our paper's been accepted for Interspeech '26 🐨 We looked at how sexualised TTS (so-called "Voice AI") voices can encode gendered power asymmetries and straight values 😪 it was a wild ride w/ @scariadna.bsky.social, @elinkanhov.bsky.social, @catlai.bsky.social & the great Éva Székely!
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
a somewhat heartening read for a change (title is misleading, it says "here's Edinburgh's" & I WISH that applied to the whole uni not just Phil) "Using AI not only prevents the acquisition of knowledge and the development of thinking but undermines thinking skills you already have".
dailynous.com
Does Your Department Have an AI Policy? Here’s Edinburgh’s - Daily Nous
Has your department instituted an AI policy? If so, whom does it govern, and what does it say? What should such a policy say? Has your department considered an AI policy but held off on writing or imp...
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Bis bald bei der Weizenbaum Conference hier in Berlin!! Ich freue mich darauf 🤩 (und gleichzeitig, wie immer, bin sehr besorgt über "KI")
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
What a fun time to care about gender identity in the UK. Unrelatedly, it was great to be part of GENDER.ED annual research showcase this week. I had a lovely time chatting about my research on trans men's vocal style-shifting with a different audience! Thanks for having me, SPSS!
eventbrite.co.uk
GENDER.ED's Annual Research Showcase 2026
Join us to explore academic and institutional research, student campaigns and change projects related to gender and sexuality studies.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Very happy to announce that I'll be presenting some work on the personas evoked by sexualised text-to-speech/"Voice AI" voices at Lavender Languages and Linguistics 32 in September! See you here in Edinburgh? 💜 lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk
lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk
LavLang32 - Lavender Languages & Linguistics 32
2-4 September 2026: Queer (dis)belonging
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
NOT GREAT, BOB!!
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Ich habe etwas zu feiern! Gotta stop announcing I'm 'delighted' so much on here but I'm umm... thrilled to say I'll be presenting at this year's @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social conference with the timely theme of 'Generative AI and society: What is at Stake'? www.weizenbaum-conference.de/program/
weizenbaum-conference.de
Program – Weizenbaum Conference 2026
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
#CHI2026 has been big, busy, occasionally overwhelming, but all worth it for some highlights! I really enjoyed today's session of vital work on Justice, Surveillance and Marginalized Identities. Big thanks to @vaikam.bsky.social and all the presenters ✊
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Visibly delighted to be part of this #CHI2026 poster session! In case you're not in Barcelona you can check it out here: alice-ross.github.io/publication/... Thanks for the photo @mxeddie.bsky.social!
A smiling person stands next to a large poster on display at a conference. The poster's heading reads 'The Sound of Silencing: Identities and Ideologies in Commercial Text-to-speech'.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
🎉Publication day🎉 for our #CHI2026 extended abstract! I wanted to find out whose voices are commonly reproduced (and whose aren't) in a popular commercial TTS system. Read all about it! w @ninamarkl.bsky.social @lhlew.bsky.social @catlai.bsky.social @chi.acm.org alice-ross.github.io/publication/...
alice-ross.github.io
The Sound of Silencing: Identities and Ideologies in Commercial Text-To-Speech.
Drawing upon sociolinguistic theory, we carry out a novel experiment to investigate implicit ideological associations in a leading commercial TTS system, concluding that the system’s output disproport...
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
I made it! I'm at #CHI2026 this week in beautiful Barcelona. Come say hi if you're around 🤗 My poster session is Tuesday afternoon, I'm also really excited for the Speech AI for All workshop on Thurs sites.google.com/andrew.cmu.e... and to see everybody's brilliant HCI work!
A colourful wayfinding sign at the entrance of CHI '26, outside the Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona. It's an overcast day but a pleasant surrounding with green trees and blue and green canopies.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Delighted to share our work on some of the sociophonetic cues reproduced in commercial TTS with @lhlew.bsky.social last week at BAAP (the Colloquium of the British Association of Academic Phoneticians) - thanks for having me! Really enjoyed some fantastic talks 🗣️🎙️
Two people smiling in front of a poster on display. The large title reads 'Kind is the Opposite of Competent: Phonetic variation in English TTS voices'.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
🔔 final reminder! I promise! 🔔 LavLang 32 abstract submission deadline is THIS SATURDAY - get scribbling, come join us in Edinburgh in September for a brilliant conference ft. Dr. Nikki Lane, Dr. @kevinguyan.bsky.social, Prof. Erez Levon, Dr. Stamatina Katsiveli, Dr. @mxeddie.bsky.social and YOU? 🤩
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
My university claims (despite operating at a surplus) that we need to cut jobs by £90M, but somehow has money for a contract with OpenAI, directly entangled with the US government, military, & ICE, for large language models to make the students less capable of thinking for themselves. Let's not.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
CFP REMINDER: you like linguistics? you like queer stuff? then get your LavLang abstracts in (please)! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🪻💬🗣️ Submissions are due by 28 March, that's almost two weeks, you got this! See you in Edinburgh in September 💜 lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk?page_id=231
lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk
Call for Papers - Lavender Languages & Linguistics 32
Key dates Information Abstracts are invited for talks and topical panel sessions on original, unpublished research broadly related to the study of language, sexuality, queerness, and gender, particula...
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
this is unrelated but I think Charli xcx has produced the definitive party album AND the definitive gothic yearning album of the last few years essentially back to back and we don't talk about that enough 💅
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
well, one good thing is, I'm delighted to say I'll be sharing my work on "The Sound of Silencing: Identities and Ideologies in Commercial Text-To-Speech" with wonderful collaborators @ninamarkl.bsky.social @catlai.bsky.social @lhlew.bsky.social as a poster at @chi.acm.org 2026! ⛱️
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Politely asking my university to divest from war crimes, an approach which hasn't always worked in the past if we're honest
Screenshot of a sent email from me to a University of Edinburgh support team. The text reads:
Hi.

I'm a PhD student and teaching assistant in the school of Informatics. I would like to know how much money the university has paid, and plans to pay, OpenAl for use of its model/s in the ELM platform. I have referred to the FAQ section but did not find this answered. Publicly available slides from Gavin McLachlan's presentation in 2024 state only that ELM "uses OpenAl's API, paid for centrally on token basis".

Now that OpenAl is directly linked to the US military*, replacing Anthropic apparently by disregarding ethical concerns about the use of Al in warfare (along with many other GenAl harms**), I do not believe that this is an appropriate use of University funds.

*this sentence is a hyperlink to Al-Jazeera's online coverage 
** this is a hyperlink to Steven Bird's excellent paper 'Big AI is accelerating the metacrisis: What can we do?'
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
Oh, look, the stupid plagiarism machine is now a stupid mass death machine.
A screenshot from the long-poisoned social media site X. Sam Altman @sama writes: "Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network.

In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.

Al safety and wide distribution of..." 
The rest of the post is not visible behind an info box reading "Readers added context:

Government officials have contradicted Sam's claim, saying OpenAl will allow the DoW to use their models for "all lawful purposes".
This could allow for uses Anthropic refused to engage in, namely mass surveillance tools and weapons systems with no human oversight."
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
CFP REMINDER! Submissions are welcome of original research, by scholars of all backgrounds, broadly related to the study of language, sexuality, queerness & gender, particularly work which addresses the theme of ‘Queer (dis)belonging’. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🪻 Deadline is 28/03, 2 months to go! lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk
lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk
LavLang32 - Lavender Languages & Linguistics 32
2-4 September 2026: Queer (dis)belonging
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
when I say humans are infinitely inventive and expressive with language in a way that a machine for generating statistically probable text can never be, this is what I mean btw
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Manchester! Date for your diaries: 10/06/26, and check out the call for presenters below: for artists, academics, activists and anyone else who works with – or is interested in – queer data 🤩 see @kevinguyan.bsky.social and @aies-edinburgh.bsky.social for more!
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
The special session on Queer and Trans Speech Science and Technology (or QT sesh as I personally like to think of it) was the highlight of Interspeech 2025 for me! Could YOU be there at the next one? September in Sydney!
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
💔 I love this university so much. The culture of education as a commodity to be sold for profit must end. In flames.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
On a cheerier note, I was in Newcastle this week to talk about Jewish perspectives on AI with young people, and this also gave me a chance to stock up on STOTTIES - highlight of any trip to north-east England tbh
A display of many bagged stotties - a large, round, thick, flat bread - for sale at Greggs in Newcastle central station
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Indefensible from @rockstargames.com People are losing their livelihoods, homes, right to remain in UK over shit like this. Thank you @chrisbratt.bsky.social / people make games for the reporting work!
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
Do you work on language and sexuality, queerness, gender, or something related? If yes, please submit to LavLang! WIP and project launches are welcome along with completed work, and it's for all career stages, check out the CfP here: lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk?page_id=231
lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk
Call for Papers - Lavender Languages & Linguistics 32
Key dates Information Abstracts are invited for talks and topical panel sessions on original, unpublished research broadly related to the study of language, ...
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Reposted by Alice Ross
Christian Ilbury @christianilbury.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
The CfPs for LavLang32 at Edinburgh is now OPEN! A reminder of our stellar lineup: • Dr. Nikki Lane (Duke) • Dr. Kevin Guyan (UoE) • Prof. Erez Levon (Bern) • Dr. Stamatina Katsiveli (American College of Greece) • Dr. Eddie Ungless (UoE) Submit a paper here: lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk?page_id=231
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