Dr Saul Albert

PhD (Queen Mary, University of London)

Pronouns: He/him
  • Undergraduate Programme Leader (Communication and Media)
  • Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences (Social Psychology)
Publications
Google Scholar

Saul Albert is a senior lecturer in Social Science (Social Psychology) in Communication and Media at 麻豆視頻_麻豆直播_麻豆传媒官网.

His research explores the technology of social interaction at two ends of the spectrum of formalization. At one end, his work on conversational AI asks which features and mechanisms of human social action can be represented and modeled computationally. At the other, he studies how people make aesthetic judgements and interact while dealing with underdetermined cultural objects and situations. This program spans multiple, often incompatible disciplines, so his work builds methodological interfaces between them.

Saul's research explores the technology of social interaction at two ends of the spectrum of formalization. At one end, his work on conversational AI asks which features and mechanisms of human social action can be represented and modeled computationally. At the other, he studies how people make aesthetic judgements and interact while dealing with underdetermined cultural objects and situations. This program spans multiple, often incompatible disciplines, so his work builds methodological interfaces between them.

Conversational AI

Three key questions in conversational AI: what can AI systems and their designers learn from naturalistic social interaction; what can we learn about social interaction using AI systems as research tools; and what can we learn by studying how people work together and collaborate with AI systems in everyday and applied settings such as health and social care? An overview of this research is presented in Three Meeting Points between CA and AI – a keynote for the 2020 European Conference on Conversation Analysis

Aesthetics in Interaction

Judgements of taste are often too underdetermined and open ended for the standardized scales and metrics typical in psychology and market research. We can look to situations in which people must work together, in situ, to establish the relevant criteria for an evalsuation, and to figure out who knows (or can claim to know) about whatever is being judged. This research program is outlined in Art as Occasion, a talk at the CAA 2017, and its implications for the creative industries are discussed in Measuring Aesthetic Value for Arts Professional.

Methodological Interfaces

Multidisciplinary research is essential for understanding the complexity of social action, but often involves incompatible assumptions, data types, and research designs. His research brings together teams with different specialisms and theoretical commitments to create new techniques, tools, and interfaces between methodological boundaries. This involves convening cross-disciplinary research networks to develop new software tools, data corpora, research training resources, and critical methodological literature.

Saul teaches undergraduate courses and supervise MSc dissertations in the School of Social Science and Humanities. He also supervises BSc dissertations for students on Loughborough Psychology courses in the School of Sports, Exercise and Health sciences. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Current undergraduate courses:

  • Contemporary Media Debates:introducing final-year students to critical and professional debates on film, entertainment, news media, games, and the creative industries.
  • Social Interaction: an intermediate course introducing students to the practicalities and methodological basis for studying human social interaction.

Current graduate courses:

  • Studying Talk and Social Interaction: a graduate-level course preparing MSc students to use of conversation analysis for their own practical, applied research projects.

Workshops

Saul runs regular in-person (and recently, online, international) workshops on interaction research methods with the Discourse and Rhetoric Group at Loughborough including:

He has also developed an online course on Digital Transcription for Interaction Analysis.

Saul co-supervises two PhD students and welcomes inquiries about supervision that related to his research interests.

  • Yuanyuan Zhang, Empathic Understanding, Directivity, and Power in Person-Centred Therapy: A Conversation Analysis of Carl Rogers’ Counselling Sessions, With Prof. Elizabeth Peel & Dr. Jessica Robles
  • Tatiana Tsapenko, Environmental Influences on Children’s Communicative Behaviour: A Multimodal Semiotic Perspective, With Prof. Ariana Maiorani

Former Supervisees

Dr. Felicity Slocombe, Understanding identity and representations of dementia: a conversation analytic and discursive analysis, With Prof. Elizabeth Peel & Prof. Alison Pilnick

Dr. Lauren Hall, Virtual assistants in smart homecare: An interactional qualitative analysis, With Prof. Charles Antaki & Prof. Elizabeth Peel

  • Albert, S., & Hall, L. (2024). Distributed agency in smart homecare interactions: A conversation analytic case study. Discourse & Communication, 17504813241267059. https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241267059
  • Albert, S., Hoey ,Elliott M., & and Raymond, C. W. (2025). The Case for Open Conversation Analysis Data. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 58(2), 156–164. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2025.2484992
  • Albert, S., Housley, W., Sikveland, R., & Stokoe, E. (frth). The Conversational Action Test: Detecting the artificial sociality of AI. New Media & Society.
  • Hall, L., Albert, S., & Peel, E. (2024). Doing Virtual Companionship with Alexa. Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality, 7(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.7146/si.v7i3.150089
  • Raymond, C. W., Albert, S., Hoey, E. M., Adams, S. M., Grothues, N., Henry, J., Marrese, O. H., Pielke, M., Reynolds, E., & Tom, R. G. (2025). Language policy as interactional practice in everyday public space: The Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction. Language, 101(1), e1–e37. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2025.a954236
  • Stokoe, E., & Albert, S. (2024). ‘Just a Method in Search of a Problem?’ The Power of Conversation Analysis. In H. Z. Waring & N. Tadic (Eds), Critical conversation analysis: Inequality and injustice in talk-in-interaction (pp. 197–223). Multilingual Matters.
  • Stokoe, E., Albert, S., Buschmeier, H., & Stommel, W. (2024). Conversation analysis and conversational technologies: Finding the common ground between academia and industry. Discourse & Communication, 18(6), 837–847. https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241267118
  • Albert, S., & Ruiter, J. P. de. (2018). Repair: The Interface Between Interaction and Cognition. Topics in Cognitive Science, 10(2), 279–313. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12339