Professor Elizabeth Stokoe

Elizabeth Stokoe HonFBPsS joined the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science in January 2023. Prior to this, she was Professor of Social Interaction in the Discourse and Rhetoric Group at Loughborough University where she was also Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor for REF2021. She has been Academic Director of Impact at LSE since January 2024.

Elizabeth’s research is in conversation analysis, focused on understanding how social interaction works in settings from first dates to medicine and healthcare; from mediation to police crisis negotiation and emergency service calls, and from sales encounters to interaction in "SaaS" (Software as a Service) platforms and conversational user interfaces. The common thread in her work is the identification of effective and less effective interactional practices and their impact on the outcome of conversational encounters. She has published over 160 research outputs, including several co-authored books (Discourse and Identity, 2006, Conversation and Gender, 2011, Discursive Psychology: Classic and Contemporary Issues, 2016; Crisis Talk: Negotiating with Individuals in Crisis, 2022). Her new co-authored book is Categories in Social Interaction (Routledge, 2025) co-authored with Dr Kevin Whitehead and Prof Geoff Raymond (both UCSB).

Awards

• Wired Innovation Fellow
• Honorary Fellow of the British Psychological Society

Expertise

Conversation analysis, social interaction, human communication, membership categorization, communication training, conversation design, science communication

Elizabeth’s current projects include bringing conversation analysis to the world of conversation design, and she has just started work on a new book with Cathy Pearl (Google conversation design lead) and Dr Saul Albert (Loughborough University) and a series of expert classes for the Conversation Design Institute. She is also a co-investigator on the £10M ESRC Centre for Early Mathematics Learning launched in June 2022 and led by Prof Camilla Gilmore at Loughborough University.

Elizabeth is passionate about translating her research in conversation analysis for wider audiences and she has presented and discussed her research at many science festivals and events including at Microsoft, Google, TED, Latitude Festival, and The Royal Institution, and featured on BBC Radio 4’s "The Life Scientific" and "Word of Mouth." Her book, Talk: The Science of Conversation, was published in 2018 (Little, Brown). Since 2008, she has worked extensively with external partners across public, third, and private sectors, and been a industry fellow at Typeform and Deployed. She developed ‘CARM’, a research-based training tool, which was awarded a Wired Innovation Fellowship. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she participated in the Policing and Security subgroup of the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), which provided independent, expert behavioural science advice to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). She is also a member of Independent SAGE’s behaviour group.