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
• CDI Foundation Conversational AI Leaders List 2025

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 ‘conversational’ technologies and products, from research methodologies to communication training and the development and operation of chatbots and related technologies. She is also a co-investigator on the £10M ESRC Centre for Early Mathematics Learning led by Prof Camilla Gilmore at Loughborough University (2022-2027). Her new book, co-authored with Kevin Whitehead and Geoffrey Raymond, Categories in Social Interaction (Routledge, 2025), focuses on the situated (re)production of categories, from the most mundane and unremarkable to those most strongly associated with power and privilege. By examining the reciprocal relationships between categorial phenomena and the basic structures and practices of social interaction, the book provides a new framework for integrating conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis.

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.