Our short course for 2024 is listed below.  You can also take a peek at our courses from prior years. 

If you would like to be notified of our upcoming courses, please join our mailing list.

Course information and registration

The course will include lectures on a range of integrated topics, directed exercises, as well as practical hands-on sessions giving participants experience in analysing data, using the perspective and methods of Conversation Analysis (CA).

Practical sessions will be focused on applying CA’s methodology, not only in the detailed analysis of particular medical/health care interactions but also in working on collections of significant patterns to be found in medical interactions. 

The data used throughout will be real-life, authentic medical interactions – based on the considerable experience each of us has had working in a range of divers medical settings (these include primary care, oncology, neurology, seizure clinics, memory clinics, maternity units, medical helplines).

Our research has focused on aspects of the effectiveness of communication, on patient-centred medicine and patient choice and the role of communication in diagnosis. We will draw on our own datasets and research findings across the practical elements of this workshop.

Our aim is to assist participants in developing research skills, through enhancing their understanding of CA’s methodology, and their ability to apply CA in their investigations of medical interactions.  

Participants will learn some of the basic linguistic terminology of phonetic/prosodic description including phrasing, accentuation, articulatory setting and intonation to be able to describe conversational speech in more technical terms. Participants will learn how to provide suitable evidence (such as pictures in Praat, and phonetic transcription) to illustrate some phonetic/prosodic phenomena. There will be overviews of linguistic phenomena and a chance to apply these to an interactional phenomenon in data sessions.

The course will offer mini-lectures, skills demonstrations, ear-training and transcription sessions, data sessions, and short assignments to be completed in groups.

The course will be limited to 20 participants so that we can work intensively to develop basic skills in data analysis and to understand the core topics to be covered.

This online short course will focus on analytic methods used in contemporary Conversation Analysis (CA), including (i) building and working with collections, (ii) transcribing embodied action, (iii) analysing non-lexical vocalizations, and (iv) applying findings in the real world. The course is designed to equip participants with new analytic skills, techniques, and strategies that can be applied in a broad range of research projects on both ordinary and institutional interaction.   

The course is intended for those who have some prior experience with Conversation Analysis and who are interested in expanding their methodological toolkit. The course is suitable for graduate and post-doctoral researchers in any relevant discipline, as well as established researchers who wish to acquire new skills in the areas to be covered.   

The course will have a limited number of participants so that we can work together intensively to develop the participants’ skills in data analysis. The course will be organised through a series of pre-recorded talks, synchronous online sessions with the course tutors, and practical activities and exercises, with an emphasis on hands-on work with data. 

The short course is intended to equip researchers to:

• work with collections of interactional practices;

• transcribe embodied actions using standard conventions (Mondada) and the ELAN application for video annotation;

• analyse aspects of the non-lexical vocalizations; 

• apply research findings in the real world; and

• use the methodological techniques covered in their own research projects.

We are offering a short course in researching medical and healthcare interactions, hosted and organized by the Centre for Advanced Studies in Language and Communication at the University of York. The course is designed to benefit those beginning or in the early stages of research into medical, clinical and healthcare interactions; it will also be relevant for healthcare professionals interested in communication. The programme will include lectures on a range of integrated topics, directed exercises, as well as practical hands-on sessions giving participants experience in analyzing data, using the perspective and methods of Conversation Analysis (CA). Practical sessions will therefore be focused on applying CA’s methodology, not only in the detailed analysis of particular medical/health care interactions but also in working on collections of significant patterns to be found in healthcare interactions, as well as discussion of the analytic challenges involved in coding of these patterns. The data used throughout will be real-life, authentic medical interactions – based on the considerable experience each of us has had working in a range of divers medical settings (these include primary care, oncology, neurology, seizure clinics, memory clinics, maternity units, medical helplines). Our research has focused on aspects of the effectiveness of communication, on patient-centred medicine and patient choice, the role of communication in diagnosis, etc.  We will draw on our own datasets and research findings across the practical elements of this workshop.

Our aim is to assist participants in developing research skills, through enhancing their understanding of CA’s methodology, and their ability to apply CA in their investigations of medical interactions. Prior experience of CA will be a real advantage, but is not a prerequisite, for this workshop. While it is not possible to learn CA from scratch in just three days, the workshop is intended to equip participants with practical analytic skills, which should be applicable to their own future work. We hope that the workshop will further inspire participants in their research.

Conversation Analysis (CA) is increasingly widely used as a research methodology in Sociology, Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Social Psychology, the Health Sciences and other related disciplines. We are offering a short course designed to give an introduction to the basic principles and methods of CA, focusing on three core topics: (i) turn-taking and overlap, (ii) sequence organization and preference and (iii) repair.

The course is intended for those who have had little previous experience with conversation analysis but who are interested in what it might offer them in their own research and are considering whether to use this method in their doctoral or post-doctoral research. It may also serve as a refresher course for those with some previous experience of CA and who now want to teach or conduct research in this area. Ideally participants will already have or have plans to record their own data. Participants may therefore be at an earlier stage in planning their research. The course would suit graduate and post-doc researchers in any relevant discipline.

The course will be limited to no more than 20 participants so that we can work intensively to develop basic skills in data analysis and to understand the three core topics to be covered. While it is not possible to learn CA from scratch in just three days, we will introduce participants to key analytic tools and methodological techniques in analysing data, including reading CA transcripts, making collections of phenomena and analysing interactional patterns and practices.  The course will be organised through talks and practical activities and exercises, with an emphasis on hands-on work with data.

The short training course is intended to equip researchers to:

• understand and apply the basic concepts of CA;

• explore three fundamental organizations of conversation;

• identify specific interactional patterns and phenomena in conversational data;

• understand the importance of making collections as an essential step towards analysis; and

• consider whether CA might be an appropriate methodology for their research.

The course will include lectures on a range of integrated topics, directed exercises, as well as practical hands-on sessions giving participants experience in analysing data, using the perspective and methods of Conversation Analysis (CA).

Practical sessions will be focused on applying CA’s methodology, not only in the detailed analysis of particular medical/health care interactions but also in working on collections of significant patterns to be found in medical interactions. 

The data used throughout will be real-life, authentic medical interactions – based on the considerable experience each of us has had working in a range of divers medical settings (these include primary care, oncology, neurology, seizure clinics, memory clinics, maternity units, medical helplines).

Our research has focused on aspects of the effectiveness of communication, on patient-centred medicine and patient choice and the role of communication in diagnosis. We will draw on our own datasets and research findings across the practical elements of this workshop.

Our aim is to assist participants in developing research skills, through enhancing their understanding of CA’s methodology, and their ability to apply CA in their investigations of medical interactions.