Alexa Hepburn

Alexa Hepburn is a Research Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, and Honorary Professor in the School of Social Science and Humanities at Loughborough University. She has published widely regarding methodological, practical, theoretical, and meta-theoretical frameworks in the social sciences, and on the use and development of conversation analytic methods, particularly regarding emotional expressions such as upset, anger, and laughter, parents’ strategies for managing children’s behaviour, techniques for giving advice, and practitioners’ empathic responses in clinical encounters. A major focus is to develop new insights into profound issues related to emotion, socialization, and influence, and to develop innovative and effective applied research techniques for interaction research. This is reflected in her four books – An Introduction to Critical Social Psychology (2003), Discursive Research in Practice: New Approaches to Psychology and Interaction (2007, edited with Sally Wiggins), Transcribing for Social Research (2017, with Galina Bolden) and Essentials of Conversation Analysis (2021, with Jonathan Potter). She has delivered over 40 invited seminars, plenaries, and keynotes, and over 30 specialist workshops on interaction analysis in 12 different countries around the world. She is currently working closely with video materials of family mealtimes, clinical encounters, and various types of telephone interaction, and developing book with Jonathan Potter: Emotionography: A Method for Analyzing Emotion in Psychology and the Social Sciences.