Language, Speech, and AI: An Online Forensics Summer School (2026)

The theme of this year's Online Forensics Summer School will be protection, privacy, and proactive synthesis. In different words, we’re looking at questions like: is it possible to protect our voices from malicious actors who might want to clone us, whilst keeping those voices recognisable to people around us? Further along the scale, can AI keep our identities fully withheld in sensitive contexts such as when we’re giving anonymous tip-offs, providing evidence in risky criminal proceedings, or even working undercover? And how much of our linguistic output do we need to think about when attempting this?

We’ll start the summer school with interactive experiments (you can, of course, opt out of any of these) and we'll bring you back the results by the end. What will those experiments be? Well, you’ll have to attend to find out more.

Getting here

That’s the great thing – you don’t need to. In even years, the Summer School runs on Teams. You could always just come to Lancaster anyway because it’s beautiful and worth the trip, but if you’re right round the globe, on a budget, and/or fitting this into a busy schedule, we’ve got you covered.

Speakers

Professor Claire Hardaker (Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University): I research aggression, deception, and manipulation, particularly in large amounts of online data.

Dr Georgina Brown (Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University): I carry out research within forensic speech science where I am ultimately interested in voice analysis for forensic and investigative purposes. I have become involved in topics including forensic speech technology, voice data privacy, training and testing in forensic voice analysis, explainability and the growing capabilities of AI-generated voices. I have worked on some of these topics in collaboration with external partners in industry and the public sector.

Dr Justin Lo (Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University): Forensic phonetician, and Lecturer in Security and Protection Science

Tickets for the FACTOR Summer School 2026 are £40 each, available at the link or here: https://lancasteruk.estore.flywire.com/products/factor-forensic-linguistics--speech-science-summer-school-2025-311382.

This includes access to all sessions and materials across both days. This Summer School is aimed at complete beginners. You do not need any knowledge of forensic linguistics or forensic speech science.

However, you do need to be aged 16 or above. To ensure speedy access to the webinar on the day, use the same name and email address for purchase, registering, and joining.