Elizabeth Stokoe

Elizabeth Stokoe PhD CPsychol HonFBPsS is a professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She conducts conversation analytic research to understand how talk works - from first dates to medical communication and from sales encounters to hostage negotiation. She has published over 150 scientific papers and books, including a popular science book about conversation analysis (Talk: The Science of Conversation). Her latest book is “Crisis Talk” (Routledge, with Dr Rein Ove Sikveland, NTNU and DrHeidi Kevoe-Feldman, Northeastern).

In 2011, Elizabeth pioneered a new method for turning her research findings about (in)effective communication into a training approach CARM – the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method, for which she won a Wired Innovation Fellowship. She has run hundreds of CARM workshops, lectures, and interventions, and shaped communication practice across public, private, and third sector organizations. She has also worked directly as an Industry Fellow in ‘software as a service’ technology companies Typeform and at Deployed. Elizabeth’s next book will be an academic/industry partnership project on conversation analysis and conversation design (with Cathy Pearl, Google, and Dr Saul Albert, Loughborough).  

Elizabeth is passionate about science communication and busting the many myths of human communication. She has given numerous public science talks including at TEDx, The Royal Institution of Great Britain, Google, Microsoft, Latitude, Cheltenham Science Festival, and New Scientist Live. Her research and biography were featured on BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she participated a behavioural science sub-group of the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE); acted as a consultant for the Scottish Parliament, and is a member of Independent SAGE behaviour group. She is also a patron of Articulacy. In 2021 was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the British Psychological Society.

‍