Episode 5 - Sam Kirkham

My guest for this episode is the fantastic Sam Kirkham!

Sam Kirkham is senior lecturer in the Phonetics Lab, Department of Linguistics and English Language and Data Science Institute at Lancaster University. He is also associate editor at Journal of Phonetics.

His research investigates the dynamics of spoken language, such as how people coordinate movements of the tongue, lips and larynx to produce speech. Sam does experiments that monitor vocal tract movements using sensors and imaging technology, and build computational models of the cognitive and physical mechanisms that underpin spoken language.

He is currently working on the following projects:

• Interpretable acoustic-articulatory relations in speech production (Royal Society, 2025-27)
• Modelling the dynamics of phonetic variation & phonological change (AHRC fellowship, 2024-25)
• TARDIS: Targets and dynamics in speech (AHRC, 2019-23)

You can read more of his extensive work here.

Thank you so much, Sam!