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Phonetics Laboratory

 

Dr Kirsty McDougall

Speaker characteristics, forensic phonetics, phonetic realisation of varieties of English

Biography

After completing a Ph.D. entitled The Role of Formant Dynamics in Determining Speaker Identity under the supervision of Francis Nolan, I worked as a Research Associate on the ESRC projects DyViS and VoiceSim, in the Phonetics Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, then took up a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, also in the Phonetics Laboratory in Cambridge. This was followed by various part-time posts as Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire and as College Lecturer and Admissions Tutor at Clare College, then Selwyn College, Cambridge, and as a Senior Research Associate in the Phonetics Laboratory, University of Cambridge, before commencing as University Lecturer in Phonetics. I am currently Principal Investigator on the ESRC-funded IVIP project ‘Improving Voice Identification Procedures’.

Education

Ph.D. (Linguistics), University of Cambridge
M.Phil. (Linguistics), University of Cambridge
B.A. (Linguistics), University of Melbourne
B.Sc. (Mathematics and Statistics), University of Melbourne

Research

My research interests in phonetics broadly fall into two main areas, speaker characteristics and the phonetics of varieties of English. I use experimental methods and approaches involving spontaneous speech, and am concerned with improving our understanding of the roles of individual, social and historical factors in theories of speech production and perception.

My research to date has primarily focussed on speaker characteristics and forensic phonetics. My Ph.D., entitled ‘The Role of Formant Dynamics in Determining Speaker Identity’, investigated ways of using formant frequency dynamics to characterise a speaker and developed techniques using polynomial equations. In the DyViS project, ‘Dynamic Variability in Speech: A Forensic Phonetic Study of British English’ (UK ESRC RES-000-23-1248), with Francis Nolan, Gea de Jong and Toby Hudson, we created the first large-scale forensically oriented speech database for English (100 male speakers of SSBE in several speaking styles), whose methodology has since inspired the development of a number of new forensic phonetic databases. As well as enabling me to expand my research on formant dynamics, the DyViS database facilitated our studies of fundamental frequency distribution in SSBE and sound change as a source of speaker-distinguishing information, and has since been used extensively by many other forensic phonetic researchers.

Also with a forensic focus, I have an ongoing programme of research investigating the potential of disfluency features to distinguish speakers. In collaboration with Martin Duckworth, I have developed and implemented TOFFA (Taxonomy of Fluency Features for Forensic Analysis), a methodology for the analysis of fluency behaviour in forensic casework. We are extending this work across different speaking styles, larger populations, more varieties of English, and other languages.

Another area of my interest within forensic phonetics is the use of earwitnesses to identify a voice in legal cases where no recording of the voice is available. I am consulted by the police as an expert witness regarding the construction of ‘voice parades’ for such cases, and have been researching the use of the statistical technique multi-dimensional scaling to improve the fairness of the procedure for selecting the foil voices for a voice parade. My research projects in earwitness evidence include the VoiceSim project, ‘Voice Similarity and the Effect of the Telephone: A Study of the Implications for Earwitness Evidence’ (UK ESRC RES-000-22-2582), my British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship project, 'A Phonetic Theory of Voice Similarity', and most recently the IVIP project ‘Improving Voice Identification Procedures’ (UK ESRC ES/S015965/1), for which I am Principal Investigator. IVIP is an interdisciplinary project bringing together colleagues in linguistics, psychology, criminology and law. The project is investigating whether higher accuracy in earwitness identification can be achieved by improving voice parade methodology, and exploring ways to improve the interaction of the criminal justice system with the use of earwitness evidence.

Beyond yet still related to forensic phonetics, I have an ongoing interest in the phonetic realisation of varieties of English, motivated by questions relating to speaker characteristics, language variation and change, and sociophonetics. As a native speaker of Australian English, I am particularly interested in this variety and have published and presented a number of acoustic and sociophonetic studies of variation in the production of its consonants. I am currently engaged in research into plosive realisation in mainstream and Aboriginal varieties of Australian English with Debbie Loakes.

Publications

Key publications: 
  • L. Gerlach, K. McDougall, F. Kelly, A. Alexander and F. Nolan (2020) ‘Exploring the Relationship Between Voice Similarity Estimates by Listeners and by an Automatic Speaker Recognition System Incorporating Phonetic Features.’ Speech Communication 85-95. [pre-print]
  • K. McDougall and M. Duckworth (2018) ‘Individual Patterns of Disfluency Across Speaking Styles: A Forensic Phonetic Investigation of Standard Southern British English.’ International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 25.2: 205-230.
  • K. McDougall and M. Duckworth (2017) ‘Profiling Fluency: An Analysis of Individual Variation in Disfluencies in Adult Males.’ Speech Communication 95: 16-27.
  • K. McDougall, F. Nolan and T. Hudson (2015) ‘Telephone Transmission and Earwitnesses: Performance on Voice Parades Controlled for Voice Similarity.’ Phonetica 72: 257-272. DOI: 10.1159/000439385 [pre-print]
  • K. McDougall (2013) ‘Assessing Perceived Voice Similarity Using Multidimensional Scaling for the Construction of Voice Parades.’ International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 20.2: 163-172.
  • K. McDougall (2006) ‘Dynamic Features of Speech and the Characterisation of Speakers: Towards a New Approach Using Formant Frequencies.’ International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 13.1: 89-126.
  • K. McDougall (2004) ‘Speaker-Specific Formant Dynamics: An Experiment on Australian English /aI/.’ International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 11.1: 103-130.

 

Other publications: 

 

PUBLICATIONS

 

2025

  • Patman, C., P. Foulkes and K. McDougall (2025) ‘Acoustic methods for analysing breathy and whispery voices: a systematic review.’ Phonetica 82.4: 271-299. https://doi.org/10.1515/phon-2025-0007

 

  • Patman C., P. Foulkes and K. McDougall (2025) ‘Evaluating the suitability of acoustic parameters for capturing breathy voice in non-pathological female speakers.’ Proceedings of 25th Interspeech 2025, 17-26 August 2025, Rotterdam, 4198-4202. DOI: 10.21437/Interspeech.2025-180 https://www.isca-archive.org/interspeech_2025/patman25_interspeech.pdf

 

2024

 

 

 

  • Gerlach, L., F. Kelly, K. McDougall and A. Alexander (2024) ‘Exploring speaker similarity based selection of relevant populations for forensic automatic speaker recognition’ Proceedings of Odyssey 2024: The Speaker and Language Recognition Workshop, Quebec, 18-21 June 2024, 25-30. DOI: 10.21437/odyssey.2024-4 https://www.isca-archive.org/odyssey_2024/gerlach24_odyssey.html

 

  • McDougall, K., A. Paver, M. Duckworth, L. Blackwell and D. Loakes (2024) ‘Patterns of silent pausing in Aboriginal and Mainstream Australian Englishes spoken in Warrnambool.’ Proceedings of the 19th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, 3-5 December 2024, Melbourne, Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association. 222-226. https://assta.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/No_45_McDougall_Paver_et_al_2024_222_226.pdf

 

 

  • Pautz, N., K. McDougall, K. Mueller-Johnson, F. Nolan, A. Paver and H.M.J. Smith (2024) ‘Time to reflect on voice parades: The influence of reflection and retention interval duration on earwitness performance.’ Applied Cognitive Psychology 38.1: e4162. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.4162

 

2023

 

  • Gerlach, L., K. McDougall, F. Kelly and A. Alexander (2023) ‘Automatic assessment of voice similarity within and across speaker groups with different accents.’ In R. Skarnitzl and J. Volín (eds.) Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 7-11 August 2023, Prague, Guarant International. 3790-3794. https://guarant.cz/icphs2023/196.pdf

 

 

  • Jat, S., K. McDougall and A. Paver (2023) ‘Pausing and the ‘Othello Error’: Patterns of pausing in truthful and deceptive speech in the DyViS database.’ International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 30.1: 87-118. https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/24331

 

  • McDougall, K. (2023) ‘Probing the phonetic bases of voice similarity: Implications for voice parades.’ (Keynote address) In E.T. Gráczi (ed.) Proceedings of SpeakVar Workshop: A Workshop on Intraspeaker and Interspeaker Variability, 2-4 October 2023, HUN-REN Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics, Budapest, 6-10. https://speakvar.nytud.hu/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/SpeakVar-Workshop-1.pdf

 

  • McDougall, K. A. Paver and F. Nolan (2023) ‘Voice distinctiveness: an investigation of the role of speakers’ position in a population with respect to f0.’ In R. Skarnitzl and J. Volín (eds.) Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 7-11 August 2023, Prague, Guarant International. 3795-3799. https://guarant.cz/icphs2023/349.pdf

 

  • Pautz, N., K. McDougall, K. Mueller-Johnson, F. Nolan, A. Paver and H.M.J. Smith (2023) ‘Identifying unfamiliar voices: the influence of sample duration and parade size.’ Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 17470218231155738. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17470218231155738

 

 

2022

 

 

 

  • Schwarz, J., K.K. Li, J.H. Sim, Y. Zhang, E. Buchanan-Worster, B. Post, J. Gibson and K. McDougall (2022) ‘Semantic cues modulate children’s and adults’ processing of audio-visual face mask speech.’ Frontiers in Psychology (Language Sciences section) 13: 879156. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.879156 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.879156/full

 

 

2021

 

  • Hudson, T., K. McDougall and V. Hughes (2021) ‘Forensic Phonetics.’ In R.-A. Knight and J. Setter (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 631-656.

 

  • McDougall, K. (2021) ‘Ear-catching versus eye-catching? Some developments and current challenges in earwitness identification evidence.’ (Keynote address)  In C. Bernardasci, D. Dipino, D. Garassino, S. Negrinelli, E. Pellegrino and S. Schmid (eds.), Proceedings of XVII AISV (Associazione Italiana Scienze della Voce) Conference: ‘Speaker Individuality in Phonetics and Speech Sciences: Speech Technology and Forensic Applications’, 4-5 February 2021, University of Zürich. 33-56. https://www.aisv.it/StudiAISV/2021/vol_8/studiAISV_8.pdf

 

 

2020

 

 

 

2019

 

  • McDougall, K. and M. Duckworth (2018) ‘Individual patterns of disfluency across speaking styles: a forensic phonetic investigation of Standard Southern British English.’ International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 25.2: 205-230. https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/11615

 

  • McDougall, K., R. Rhodes, M. Duckworth, P. French and C. Kirchhübel (2019) ‘Application of the ‘TOFFA’ framework to the analysis of disfluencies in forensic phonetic casework.’ In S. Calhoun, P. Escudero, M. Tabain and P. Warren (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 5-9 August 2019, Melbourne, Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, 731-735.  https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs-proceedings/ICPhS2019/papers/ICPhS_780.pdf

 

 

2018

 

  • Loakes, D., K. McDougall, J. Clothier, J. Hajek and J. Fletcher (2018) ‘Sociophonetic variability of /t/ in Aboriginal and mainstream Australian English.’ In J. Epps, J. Wolfe, J. Smith and C. Jones (eds.), Proceedings of the 17th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, 4-7 December 2018, Sydney, Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, 5-8. https://assta.org/proceedings/sst/SST-2018/SST_2018_Proceedings_Rev_A_IDX.pdf

 

 

2017

 

 

 

2015

 

 

 

 

 

2013

 

 

 

 

 

2011

 

  • Duckworth. M., K. McDougall, G. de Jong and L. Shockey (2011) ‘The consistency of formant measurements in high quality audio data: the effect of agreeing measurement procedures.’ International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 18.1: 35-51. https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/5977

 

 

 

 

2010

 

  • French, J.P., F. Nolan, P. Foulkes, P. Harrison and K. McDougall (2010) ‘A position statement concerning use of impressionistic likelihood terms in forensic speaker comparison cases: rejoinder to the response of Rose and Morrison.’ International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 17.1: 143–152. https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/10432

 

 

 

2009

 

 

  • Nolan, F., K. McDougall, G. de Jong and T. Hudson (2009) ‘The DyViS database: style-controlled recordings of 100 homogeneous speakers for forensic phonetic research.’ International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 16.1: 31-57. https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/10005

 

 

2008

 

 

 

2007

 

  • de Jong, G., K. McDougall, T. Hudson and F. Nolan (2007) ‘The speaker-discriminating power of sounds undergoing historical change: a formant-based study.’ In J. Trouvain and W. Barry (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 6-10 August 2007, Saarbrücken, 1813-1816. http://www.icphs2007.de/conference/Papers/1542/1542.pdf

 

  • de Jong, G., K. McDougall and F. Nolan (2007) ‘Sound change and speaker identity: an acoustic study.’ In C. Müller (ed.), Speaker Classification II: Selected Papers. Berlin: Springer. 130-141.

 

  • French, P.,  L. Cawley, G. de Jong, M. Duckworth, P. Foulkes, P. Harrison, T. Hudson, K. McDougall and F. Nolan (2007) ‘Position statement concerning use of impressionistic likelihood terms in forensic speaker comparison cases.’ International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 14(1): 137–144. https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSLL/article/view/6219

 

  • Hudson, T., G. de Jong, K. McDougall, P. Harrison and F. Nolan (2007) ‘F0 statistics for 100 young male speakers of Standard Southern British English.’ In J. Trouvain and W. Barry (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 6-10 August 2007, Saarbrücken, 1809-1812. http://www.icphs2007.de/conference/Papers/1570/1570.pdf

 

  • Loakes, D. and K. McDougall (2007) ‘Frication of Australian English /p t k/: group tendencies and individual differences.’ In J. Trouvain and W. Barry (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 6-10 August 2007, Saarbrücken, 1445-1448. http://www.icphs2007.de/conference/Papers/1583/1583.pdf

 

  • McDougall, K. and F. Nolan (2007) ‘Discrimination of speakers using the formant dynamics of /uː/ in British English.’ In J. Trouvain and W. Barry (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 6-10 August 2007, Saarbrücken, 1825-1828. http://www.icphs2007.de/conference/Papers/1567/1567.pdf

 

 

2006

 

  • Jones, M.J. and K. McDougall (2006) ‘A comparative acoustic study of Australian English fricated /t/: assessing the Irish (English) link.’ In P. Warren and C.I. Watson (eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian  International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, 6-8 December 2006, Auckland: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, 6-12. https://assta.org/proceedings/sst/2006/sst2006-16.pdf

 

 

  • McDougall, K. (2006) ‘The role of formant dynamics in determining speaker identity.’ Ph.D. abstract. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 13.1: 144-145.

 

  • Nolan, F., K. McDougall, G. de Jong and T. Hudson (2006) ‘A forensic phonetic study of ‘dynamic’ sources of variability in speech: the DyViS project.’ In P. Warren and C.I. Watson (eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, 6-8 December 2006, Auckland: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, 13-18. https://assta.org/proceedings/sst/2006/sst2006-17.pdf

 

 

2004

 

  • Loakes, D. and K. McDougall (2004) ‘Frication of /k/ and /p/ in Australian English: inter- and intra-speaker variation.’ In S. Cassidy, F. Cox, R. Mannell and S. Palethorpe (eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, 8-10 December 2004, Sydney: Australian Speech Science and Technology Association, 171-176. https://assta.org/proceedings/sst/2004/proceedings/papers/sst2004-373.pdf

 

 

 

2003

 

  • Kawasaki, K. and K. McDougall (2003) ‘Implications of representations of casual conversation for second language learners: a case study in Japanese sentence final particles.’ Japanese Language Education Around the Globe 13: 41-55. 

 

  • McDougall, K. (2003) ‘Vowel-to-vowel coarticulatory evidence of the “targetful” nature of schwa.’ In S. Palethorpe and M. Tabain (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Seminar on Speech Production, 7-10 December 2003, Sydney: Macquarie University, 161-166.

 

 

 

2002

 

  • McDougall, K. (2002) ‘Speaker-characterising properties of formant dynamics: a case study.’ In C. Bow (ed.), Proceedings of the 9th Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, 3-5 December 2002, Melbourne: Australian Speech Science and Technology Association, 403-408. https://assta.org/proceedings/sst/sst2002/Papers/McDougal069.pdf

Teaching and Supervisions

Teaching: 

I contribute to teaching and supervision in these courses in the Linguistics Tripos:

  • Paper 1 - Sounds and Words

  • Paper 6 - Phonetics

I also teach on the M.Phil. Lent Term courses Experimental Phonetics and Phonology and Phonetic Variation.

 

Research supervision: 

I welcome enquiries from potential M.Phil. and Ph.D. students.

 

PhD Supervisees

 

 

Name Thesis title Date Completed
Linda Gerlach Automatic assessment of voice similarity and its implications for forensic applications. 2025
Daniel Lee

 

  
Chloe Patman    
Alice Paver    
Tallulah Buckley    

 

Other Professional Activities

I undertake forensic phonetic expert witness work in collaboration with Prof. Francis Nolan. This includes tasks such as speaker identification/comparison, voice parades (earwitness identification), transcription and questioned utterance analysis.

 

Professional Memberships

  • Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association
  • British Association of Academic Phoneticians
  • International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics
  • International Phonetic Association
Associate Professor of Phonetics
Fellow of Selwyn College

Affiliations

Collaborator profiles: 
Alice Paver
Professor Francis Nolan
Classifications: 
Staff

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge