Alice Ross
@alice-ross.bsky.social
76 followers 96 following 40 posts
Linguist, anarchist, reader, overthinker, cat enthusiast. PhD student at CSTR, University of Edinburgh: I research speech technology and its social impacts. ייִדיש אויך מעגלעך. https://alice-ross.github.io/
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alice-ross.bsky.social
LAVLANG! IN! EDINBURGH! 2026! 💜🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🪻🦩💬✨
christianilbury.bsky.social
HI. It's me.

WE'RE READY TO LAUNCH. 2-4 Sept 2026. LavLang23.

Keynote Speakers
• Dr. Nikki Lane (Duke University)
• Dr. Kevin Guyan (UoE, School of Business)
• Prof. Erez Levon (Universität Bern)
• Dr. Stamatina Katsiveli (American College of Greece)
• Eddie Ungless (UoE, School of Informatics)
alice-ross.bsky.social
OVE was pioneering work by Prof Gunnar Fant (1919-2009 z'l'), what a star, more about him here ncvs.org/hall-of-fame...
(and I should've capitalised it because it is an abbreviation in this case, for Orator Verbis Electris 🤖 but is also a regular Swedish name!)
ncvs.org
alice-ross.bsky.social
THRILLED to be visiting the lovely Speech, Music & Hearing folks at KTH Royal Institute of Technology this week! So much cool work happens here (voice quality, gender-ambiguous TTS, gesture and interaction...) and what's more they have this GORGEOUS vowel formant synthesis machine from 1953, Ove 🤩
alice-ross.bsky.social
Always antifascist. The crisis is capitalism. Scottish Parliament today.
alice-ross.bsky.social
And @lavlang.bsky.social was a delight throughout - amazing keynotes and talks, wonderful people, great venue, genuinely inspiring work. I don't have a photo of me presenting (but promise I did) so it's represented by this corner of Manchester's Queer Lit bookshop which I visited, also lovely! 🏳️‍🌈🪻💜
A collection of healthy, leafy house plants in bright sunshine, with small Pride flags - rainbow, bi pride, non-binary and lesbian pride flags are visible - stuck in their pots.
alice-ross.bsky.social
Catching my breath after two wonderful conferences last week! This @interspeech.bsky.social Special Session on Queer & Trans Speech Science & Technology was a real highlight, honoured to be part of it - huge thanks to @greatlikecheese.bsky.social, @ninamarkl.bsky.social and the other organisers! 💜
Four well-dressed people, one speaking, stand on a stage in front of a large screen displaying the text "Queer and Trans Speech Science and Technology: Interspeech Special Session 2025"
alice-ross.bsky.social
outwith is a national treasure 🙂‍↕️
alice-ross.bsky.social
thank you so much! 🤩
alice-ross.bsky.social
Heading to Rotterdam today for @interspeech.bsky.social 🤩 and the paper is out! 🎉 Thanks again to my coauthors @greatlikecheese.bsky.social, @mxeddie.bsky.social, @catlai.bsky.social, and to all the participants! The special session on queer + trans speech is on Monday afternoon. See you there?
ISCA Archive - Conveying Gender Through Speech: Insights from Trans Men
www.isca-archive.org
alice-ross.bsky.social
such a pleasure! thank you so much (and all the CHM colleagues!) for the warm welcome 🤩
alice-ross.bsky.social
Super grateful to be visiting the Forschungsbereich Mensch und Maschine / Center for Humans and Machines this week in their incredibly cool home @mpib-berlin.bsky.social 🤩 huge thanks for all the good thoughts and questions at the lab meeting today!
alice-ross.bsky.social
V proud to say I'll be presenting our work on trans men's vocal style-shifting and metalinguistic awareness next month at LavLang 31 @lavlang.bsky.social!🪻🌈💬
If you like LGBTQ things, linguistics, or Manchester, you should come too!

lavlang2025.wordpress.com
Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference, 20th-22nd August, 2025
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
lavlang2025.wordpress.com
alice-ross.bsky.social
as ever, thanks to my brilliant co-authors: @mxeddie.bsky.social @catlai.bsky.social and @greatlikecheese.bsky.social who actually DID the phonetic analysis that I'm reporting on here 🙇‍♀️ all stars!
alice-ross.bsky.social
I think this is the biggest screen my work's ever been shown on (...so far?!) #UKIS2025 at University of York last week. It was wonderful hearing about the varied and inspiring work everyone's been doing - especially on York's own YorVoice project 💬💜
alice-ross.bsky.social
Excited (and also nervous) to present our project on trans men's vocal style-shifting at UK and Ireland Speech next week 🥳 I'll be in Oral Session A, on Monday afternoon, please be nice if you're there 🙂‍↕️
sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/u...
alice-ross.bsky.social
"classifications do not just describe people’s experiences of the world but normatively construct the world they claim to describe": the great @kevinguyan.bsky.social writes about 'inclusion' and what gets flattened, miscategorised, made incomprehensible or just left out
kevinguyan.bsky.social
Classification systems and admin tools might not sound all that exciting — but they're at the forefront of the fight for LGBTQ equalities!

📝 In this blog post, I introduce the idea of a Rainbow Trap: a hollow form of inclusion where queer people are forced into boxes not of their choosing.
The cover image for the blogpost, the title reads: LGBTQ inclusion and the hidden harm of labels. There is a white hand holding a LGBTQ rainbow flag.
Reposted by Alice Ross
dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social
“In the Colony of Blooded Eyes: A Trilogy on Working Conditions as a Content Moderator in Germany” is a raw and honest account by Sakine Mohamadi Bozorg on the realities faced by migrant content moderators in Germany.
alice-ross.bsky.social
... and to all the interviewees, who were a delight!
The paper presents a mixed-methods study exploring phonetic features of trans men's speech in different contexts, along with qualitative interviews about their voices, experiences and metalinguistic awareness. I'm really proud of it!
alice-ross.bsky.social
Delighted to say I'll be presenting my work on 'Conveying gender through speech: insights from trans men' at @interspeech.bsky.social 2025! Huge thanks to my excellent coauthors @greatlikecheese.bsky.social, @mxeddie.bsky.social and @catlai.bsky.social 🏳️‍⚧️🗣️💜
alice-ross.bsky.social
"There is an island of strangers in Westminster. Most of them have never known the bonds that strangers can form."
Richard Lighten's beautifully written response to Starmer rjaylighten.substack.com/p/an-island-...
An Island of Strangers
In response to Keir Starmer
rjaylighten.substack.com
alice-ross.bsky.social
i am so weary of this discourse
the "is this a pigeon" meme, showing a confused anime guy labelled 'NYT tech editor' looking at a butterfly labelled 'bullshit machine' and asking 'is this deserving human rights?'
alice-ross.bsky.social
Ok so now @nytimes.com is considering the big questions like "does Gemini deserve human rights". Rather than "do data workers, who are in fact humans, deserve human rights" 🤦
alice-ross.bsky.social
interesting! 'tenacity' feels low frequency enough that I can definitely believe I'd regularise just because it's kinda hard to access, but that doesn't apply for strength (imo)
alice-ross.bsky.social
Hanif Abdurraqib (over on ig in this instance), consistently making me nod and think and cry in a good way.
A screenshot of white text on a black background, from the instagram account @nifmuhammad. The text reads: Cruelty is one crises that is built from several other crises and one that I have been thinking of recently is A Deficit Of Wonder, which exists not due to a lack of moments of wonder for humans to bask in, but what seems, to me, like a refusal to locate and engage in wonder, a refusal to offer one's close attention to the world. There is a level of individualism embedded in this of course, which is another interconnecting crisis. Treat the world like an assignment you, individually, have to get through and/or conquer, and it makes sense that you would ask a computer what you should wear with a sweater you like. It makes sense that you would turn your face away from the vastness of space to promote some songs.