Meet the researcher: Prof Carolyn McGettigan

My research is concerned with all aspects of how the human voice is perceived and produced.

In my research, a key issue is the flexibility of the voice - how our voice sounds is constantly changing, often in ways that we intend but also in ways we can’t control. I’m interested in understanding the consequences of that variability for both listeners and vocalisers. In my perception work, I’m interested in, for example, how listeners recognise other people from their voice, how they socially appraise those voices, and how they might represent them in the brain. In my work on voice production, I’ve investigate how we control and modulate our own voice to express identity and social intentions. I’ve been using MRI to develop new insights into how the brain controls the voice, through analysing images of the vocal tract and brain activity during speech tasks.