Dr Julian Hough

Associate Professor in Human Computer Interaction

Computer Science

julian.hough@swansea.ac.uk

Office - 119
First Floor
Computational Foundry
Bay Campus

Available For Postgraduate Supervision

Research Links

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4345-6759

ResearchGate

Google Scholar

About

I am a researcher and lecturer in human-human and human-system interaction using Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence techniques, with the aim of improving human-agent interaction with agents like robots in terms of quality and ethical outcomes.

Personal website

Areas Of Expertise

Natural Language Processing
Multimodal Communication
Disfluency
Human Dialogue and Dialogue Systems
Human-Robot Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction
Human-centred Artificial Intelligence
Cognitive Applications of speech technology

Career Highlights

Teaching Interests

I teach broadly across Computer Science at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. I supervise projects with topics on Natural Language Processing (including the speech signal and multimodality), human robot-interaction and human-centred approaches to Artificial Intelligence.

Research Award Highlights Collaborations

Publications

Research Highlights

Hough, J., Zarrieß, S., Kennington, C., Schlangen, D., & Poesio, M. (2024). Conceptual Pacts for Reference Resolution using Small, Dynamically Constructed Language Models: A Study in Puzzle Building Dialogues. In The 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (pp. 3689-3699). ELRA and ICCL.
SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa65924
https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.327/
Nagele, A. & Hough, J. (2024). “The sleep data looks way better than I feel.” An autoethnographic account and diffractive reading of sleep-tracking. Frontiers in Computer Science, 6
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2024.1258289, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa65923
Förster, F., Romeo, M., Holthaus, P., Wood, L., Dondrup, C., Fischer, J., Liza, F., Kaszuba, S., Hough, J., Nesset, B., García, D., Kontogiorgos, D., Williams, J., Özkan, E., Barnard, P., Berumen, G., Price, D., Cobb, S., Wiltschko, M...., & Kapetanios, E. (2023). Working with troubles and failures in conversation between humans and robots: workshop report. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 10(Human-Robot Interaction)
https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1202306, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64960
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1202306
Healey, P., Howes, C., Kempson, R., Mills, G., Purver, M., Gregoromichelaki, E., Eshghi, A., & Hough, J. (2023). “Who's there?”: Depicting identity in interaction. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x22001492, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64931
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x22001492
Ozkan, E., Healey, P., Gurion, T., Hough, J., & Jamone, L. (2023). Speakers Raise their Hands and Head during Self-Repairs in Dyadic Conversations. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, 1-1.
https://doi.org/10.1109/tcds.2023.3254808, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64930
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/tcds.2023.3254808
Ozkan, E., Gurion, T., Hough, J., Healey, P., & Jamone, L. (2022). Speaker Motion Patterns during Self-repairs in Natural Dialogue. In International Conference on Multimodal InteractionACM.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3536220.3563684, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64929
Nagele, A., Hough, J., & Dinnen, Z. (2022). The Subjectivities of Wearable Sleep-Trackers - A Discourse Analysis. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended AbstractsACM.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519677, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64928
Nasreen, S., Hough, J., & Purver, M. (2021). Detecting Alzheimer’s Disease Using Interactional and Acoustic Features from Spontaneous Speech. In Interspeech 2021ISCA.
https://doi.org/10.21437/interspeech.2021-1526, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64933
Rohanian, M., Hough, J., & Purver, M. (2021). Alzheimer's Dementia Recognition Using Acoustic, Lexical, Disfluency and Speech Pause Features Robust to Noisy Inputs. In Interspeech 2021ISCA.
https://doi.org/10.21437/interspeech.2021-1633, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64932
Ozkan, E., Gurion, T., Hough, J., Healey, P., & Jamone, L. (2021). Specific hand motion patterns correlate to miscommunications during dyadic conversations. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) (pp. 379-406). IEEE.
https://doi.org/10.1109/icdl49984.2021.9515613, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64925

All Research

Journal Articles

Nagele, A. & Hough, J. (2024). “The sleep data looks way better than I feel.” An autoethnographic account and diffractive reading of sleep-tracking. Frontiers in Computer Science, 6
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2024.1258289, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa65923
Förster, F., Romeo, M., Holthaus, P., Wood, L., Dondrup, C., Fischer, J., Liza, F., Kaszuba, S., Hough, J., Nesset, B., García, D., Kontogiorgos, D., Williams, J., Özkan, E., Barnard, P., Berumen, G., Price, D., Cobb, S., Wiltschko, M...., & Kapetanios, E. (2023). Working with troubles and failures in conversation between humans and robots: workshop report. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 10(Human-Robot Interaction)
https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1202306, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64960
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1202306
Healey, P., Howes, C., Kempson, R., Mills, G., Purver, M., Gregoromichelaki, E., Eshghi, A., & Hough, J. (2023). “Who's there?”: Depicting identity in interaction. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x22001492, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64931
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x22001492
Ozkan, E., Healey, P., Gurion, T., Hough, J., & Jamone, L. (2023). Speakers Raise their Hands and Head during Self-Repairs in Dyadic Conversations. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, 1-1.
https://doi.org/10.1109/tcds.2023.3254808, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64930
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/tcds.2023.3254808
Nasreen, S., Rohanian, M., Hough, J., & Purver, M. (2021). Alzheimer’s Dementia Recognition From Spontaneous Speech Using Disfluency and Interactional Features. Frontiers in Computer Science, 3
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2021.640669, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64927
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2021.640669
Purver, M., Sadrzadeh, M., Kempson, R., Wijnholds, G., & Hough, J. (2021). Incremental Composition in Distributional Semantics. Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 30(2), 379-406.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10849-021-09337-8, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64926
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10849-021-09337-8

Book Chapters

Hough, J. & Purver, M. (2017). Probabilistic Record Type Lattices for Incremental Reference Processing. In Chatzikyriakidis, Stergios and Luo, Zhaohui (Ed.), Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy (pp. 189-222). Springer International Publishing
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50422-3_8, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64053
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50422-3_8
Eshghi, A., Purver, M., Hough, J., & Sato, Y. (2013). Probabilistic Grammar Induction in an Incremental Semantic Framework. Constraint Solving and Language Processing (pp. 92-107). Springer Berlin Heidelberg
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41578-4_6, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64055
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41578-4_6

Conference Contributions

Sumanathilaka, D., Micallef, N., & Hough, J. (2024). Can LLMs assist with Ambiguity? A Quantitative Evaluation of various Large Language Models on Word Sense Disambiguation. In First International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence for Cybersecurity
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSGRC62081.2024.10691283, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67920
Sumanathilaka, D., Micallef, N., & Hough, J. (2024). Assessing GPT's Potential for Word Sense Disambiguation: A Quantitative Evaluation on Prompt Engineering Techniques. In 2024 IEEE 15th Control and System Graduate Research Colloquium (ICSGRC) (pp. 204-209). IEEE.
https://doi.org/10.1109/icsgrc62081.2024.10691283, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67921
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/icsgrc62081.2024.10691283
Hough, J., Zarrieß, S., Kennington, C., Schlangen, D., & Poesio, M. (2024). Conceptual Pacts for Reference Resolution using Small, Dynamically Constructed Language Models: A Study in Puzzle Building Dialogues. In The 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (pp. 3689-3699). ELRA and ICCL.
SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa65924
https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.327/
Ozkan, E., Gurion, T., Hough, J., Healey, P., & Jamone, L. (2022). Speaker Motion Patterns during Self-repairs in Natural Dialogue. In International Conference on Multimodal InteractionACM.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3536220.3563684, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64929
Nagele, A., Hough, J., & Dinnen, Z. (2022). The Subjectivities of Wearable Sleep-Trackers - A Discourse Analysis. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended AbstractsACM.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519677, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64928
Nasreen, S., Hough, J., & Purver, M. (2021). Detecting Alzheimer’s Disease Using Interactional and Acoustic Features from Spontaneous Speech. In Interspeech 2021ISCA.
https://doi.org/10.21437/interspeech.2021-1526, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64933
Rohanian, M., Hough, J., & Purver, M. (2021). Alzheimer's Dementia Recognition Using Acoustic, Lexical, Disfluency and Speech Pause Features Robust to Noisy Inputs. In Interspeech 2021ISCA.
https://doi.org/10.21437/interspeech.2021-1633, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64932
Ozkan, E., Gurion, T., Hough, J., Healey, P., & Jamone, L. (2021). Specific hand motion patterns correlate to miscommunications during dyadic conversations. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) (pp. 379-406). IEEE.
https://doi.org/10.1109/icdl49984.2021.9515613, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64925
Rohanian, M. & Hough, J. (2021). Best of Both Worlds: Making High Accuracy Non-incremental Transformer-based Disfluency Detection Incremental. In Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 11th International Joint Conference on Natural Language ProcessingAssociation for Computational Linguistics.
https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2021.acl-long.286, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64934
Nasreen, S., Hough, J., & Purver, M. (2021). Rare-Class Dialogue Act Tagging for Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnosis. In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (pp. 290-300). Association for Computational Linguistics.
https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2021.sigdial-1.32, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64935

Supervision

Computational Semantics of Natural Language for Computational Law (current)

PhD

Other supervisor: Dr Adam Wyner
To what extent may educational technological tools better how anti-social behaviour is addressed and understood in England and Wales. (current)

PhD

Other supervisor: Dr Tom Owen

Taught Modules

CSC348 Web Application Development

The module will develop the principles and technologies used for building web-based systems. Practical experience of building web systems will be gained via laboratories and coursework. Existing high programming skill and experience is essential for this module. Existing programming experience is essential for this module.
CSCM22 Symbolic Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing

This module will introduce the symbolic, statistical, and structural properties of language, explain and compare some of the major approaches in symbolic AI and Natural Language Processing, and explain their relevance to practical computing application areas.
CSCM48 Web Application Development

The module will develop the principles and technologies used for building web-based systems. Practical experience of building web systems will be gained via laboratories and coursework. Existing high programming skill and experience is essential for this module.

Key Grants and Projects

FLUIDITY in simulated Human-Robot Interaction with Speech Interfaces 2023 - 2026

PI, EPSRC New Investigator Award, £587,000
Annotating Reference and Coreference In Dialogue Using Conversational Agents in games (ARCIDUCA) 2022 - 2025

EPSRC, Co-I, £1,090,000
Learning collaboration affordances for intuitive human-robot interaction 2019 - 2021

Co-I , Turing Institute partnership grant, £218,000

Dr Julian Hough

Email address

Research Links

About

Areas Of Expertise

Career Highlights

Publications

Research Highlights

All Research

Journal Articles

Book Chapters

Conference Contributions

Supervision

Computational Semantics of Natural Language for Computational Law (current)

To what extent may educational technological tools better how anti-social behaviour is addressed and understood in England and Wales. (current)

Taught Modules

CSC348 Web Application Development

CSCM22 Symbolic Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing

CSCM48 Web Application Development

Key Grants and Projects

FLUIDITY in simulated Human-Robot Interaction with Speech Interfaces 2023 - 2026

Annotating Reference and Coreference In Dialogue Using Conversational Agents in games (ARCIDUCA) 2022 - 2025

Learning collaboration affordances for intuitive human-robot interaction 2019 - 2021