Studying vocal tract configuration and articulation is critical across many fields - from phonetics to speech pathology; singing science to speaker identity - but data used for studying vocal tracts and articulation is typically complex and multimodal. As medical imaging datasets, particularly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, become more widely available, there is an urgent need for researchers to address processing bottlenecks and develop generalisable, fully-automatic workflows for extracting vocal tract and articulation data, alongside robust statistical techniques for subsequent analysis. By bringing together an interdisciplinary group of researchers working on related problems, we hope to foster new collaborative working relationships; share data and methods to avoid duplicating research effort; and identify priorities for future research, such as new methods and participant populations.
Although vocal tract shape and articulation studies appear frequently in regular Interspeech sessions, the focus is usually upon the results rather than the methods. The Interspeech 2026 theme of ‘Understanding Speech Together’ is a perfect opportunity to bring together the diverse group of people developing and using similar methods, to enrich our collective understanding of the vocal articulators.
This special session will consist of a 40-minute Survey Talk followed by a poster session.
We welcome all submissions related to the topic, including, but not limited to: new datasets, imaging techniques, methods and models for quantifying vocal tract shaping and articulatory dynamics, methods for capture and processing of contemporaneous audio recordings, and related topics.
You can submit for the special session via the general Interspeech Call for Papers process:
Amelia Gully, University of York
Michael Proctor, Macquarie University
Tünde Szalay, University of Sydney
Kirrie Ballard, University of Sydney
Craig Jin, University of Sydney
Tharinda Piyadasa, University of Sydney
Emily Kiff, University of York