This year’s particular theme 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 still being recognisable to people around us? And 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 and bring you back the results by the end. What will those experiments be? Well, you’ll have to attend to find out more.
Note that if you attended the in-person event in 2025, to keep it inclusive and accessible, we recap some of the same basic concepts, but then we move into new territory.
📎 More information: https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/factor/summer-school/ss2026/
🎟️ Book your place: https://lancasteruk.estore.flywire.com/products/factor-forensic-linguistics--speech-science-summer-school-2025-311382
Note that last year, tickets sold out a few weeks before the event. (We knew it was going to be big but even we were surprised at how fast they disappeared.) All that to say, if you’ve been waiting for some sort of cosmic Bat Signal, here it is.