Dr. Kirsty Mcdougall

Biography

Kirsty McDougall is an Associate Professor of Phonetics in the Theoretical Applied Linguistics section at the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, where she is also a Fellow of Selwyn College. Her research focuses on speaker characteristics, forensic phonetics, and the phonetic realization of varieties of English. She has emphasized the importance of dynamic features in speech, particularly formant frequencies, to characterize differences among speakers. Her work has led to the development of robust techniques for selecting appropriate voice samples in forensic analysis. Additionally, Dr. McDougall has explored sociophonetic variation, specifically examining consonant realization in Australian English. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the ESRC-funded project IVIP (Improving Voice Identification Procedures), which is an interdisciplinary project that collaborates with researchers from linguistics, psychology, and criminology to enhance the understanding of earwitness behavior and its implications within the criminal justice system.

Research Interests

Experience