Leigh Clark

Foundry (United Kingdom), Trinity College Dublin

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About

Leigh Clark is a leading voice in Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) and speech interaction research, whose work fundamentally shapes how we design and understand voice-based technologies. His research centers on the cognitive and social dimensions of speech synthesis, exploring how the nuances of spoken language—from vague phrasing to expressive delivery—influence user perception and trust. Clark’s major contributions include mapping the grand challenges for the CUI community, as evidenced by his highly cited workshop paper "CUI@CHI" (24 citations), which helped define the field’s research agenda. He has also advanced the science of expressive speech synthesis, co-authoring a seminal chapter in *The Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents* (19 citations), and pioneered the study of the "verbal uncanny valley," demonstrating how subtle linguistic features in computer speech can evoke discomfort (17 citations). Through projects like CogSIS, Clark investigates the cognitive effects of synthetic voices, bridging psycholinguistics and human-computer interaction. His work is essential reading for anyone designing conversational agents, offering evidence-based insights into making speech interfaces more natural, trustworthy, and engaging.