I’m Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Conversational Informatics at UCD’s School of Information & Communication Studies. My work combines psychology, human-computer interaction and speech and language technology to understand and explore how we interact with conversational AI technologies.

I did my undergraduate studies in Psychology & Business Studies (2006) as well as my PhD in Usability Engineering (2011) at the University of Edinburgh. Before joining UCD in 2014, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham’s School of Computer Science, one of the top ranked Computer Science departments in the UK at the time. My collaborative research work has won a number of best paper awards at top tier HCI venues (e.g. ACM CHI).

Along with David Coyle and Marguerite Barry, I co-founded the HCI@UCD group in 2015, and I am one of the founders of the ACM Conversational User Interfaces (ACM CUI) international conference series. I am also one of the co-founders of the Research Ireland d-real Centre for Research Training and a co-PI in the Research Ireland ADAPT Centre, a €100 million research centre conducting cutting edge research on the future of AI driven content technologies. I am also an ACM Distinguished Speaker, conducting international keynote presentations on topics related to conversational AI. I am regularly involved in the CHI conference, having served as Associate Chair (2017, 2018, 2021), Subcommittee Chair for the Understanding People: Theory, Concepts, Methods Subcommittee (2022, 2023) and Poster Track chair (2026).