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

The theme of this year's Online Forensics Summer School is 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? 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. See the timetable for more.

Registration

Tickets for the FACTOR Summer School 2026 are £40 each. 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 take part:

1. Purchase a ticket. Note that last year, tickets sold out several weeks before the event.
2. Register for the webinar. To ensure speedy access on the day, use the same name and email address for purchase, registering, and joining.

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 visit Lancaster because it’s beautiful and worth the trip, but we'll be on Teams too, so 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

Note

Each even year (2026, 2028, etc.) is an online partial rerun of the previous, in-person, odd-numbered year (2025, 2027, etc.). In different words, if you attended the 2025 Summer School, you will find that we recap some of those same basic concepts, but also, because things in this field are moving so quickly, we introduce new topics, developments, and results too.