Halcyon Lawrence
Halcyon Lawrence (17 June 1970 – 29 October 2023) was a professor of technical communication, best known for her work on bias in speech recognition technology.
Lawrence was born and raised in Trinidad, where she earned a bachelor's degree from University of the West Indies at St. Augustine.[1] She worked as a technical trainer, and after 2004 or 5 also began adjuncting at UWI to teach technical writing.[2] In 2006, she decided to leave industry for academia, ultimately returning to university at Illinois Institute of Technology.[2] There, she earned an M.Sc. in Technical Communication and Information Design in 2010 and a Ph.D. in Technical Communication in 2013.[1] She was then a Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Tech.[3] In 2018, Lawrence became a professor at Towson University, where she reached the rank of associate professor.[2]
A primary focus of Lawrence's research was speech recognition technology, examining its history and its limitations. She was frequently cited as an expert on this topic.[4][5][6][7][8] She published a chapter, "Siri Disciplines," in the book Your Computer Is on Fire (2021),[9] which was excerpted in Engadget.[10] In this chapter, Lawrence argues that virtual assistants functionally discipline speakers into using a preferred, "standard" accent.[5]
While at Georgia Tech, Lawrence helped redesign and served as co-coordinator of a new program in computer science and technical communication.[3][11][2] Lawrence co-chaired the SIGDOC 2021 Conference with Liz Lane.[2] She won a 2022 CPTSC Research Grant to Promote Anti-racist Programs and Pedagogies.[12]
Lawrence died on October 29, 2023. In 2025, the journal Communication Design Quarterly published a collection of articles commemorating her impact.[13][14][15][16][17]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Halcyon Lawrence" (in en). 2022-12-14. https://magazine.iit.edu/winter-2022/halcyon-lawrence.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "The Docs are In: Exploring the Intersection of Tech Comm and Academia with Dr. Liz Hutter and Dr. Halcyon Lawrence" (in en-US). 2023-07-25. https://redmonk.com/videos/the-docs-are-in-exploring-the-intersection-of-tech-comm-and-academia-with-dr-liz-hutter-and-dr-halcyon-lawrence/.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Burnett, Rebecca E.; Frazee, Andy; Girard, Amanda K.; Hutter, Liz; Lawrence, Halcyon; Menagarishvili, Olga (2022-12-14). "Sustainable Collaboration: A Co-taught, Client-based Course Sequence Integrating Computer Science and Technical Communication" (in en). Programmatic Perspectives 13 (2): 11–51. ISSN 2326-1412. https://programmaticperspectives.cptsc.org/index.php/jpp/article/view/21.
- ↑ Lloreda, Claudia Lopez. "Speech Recognition Tech Is Yet Another Example of Bias" (in en). https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/speech-recognition-tech-is-yet-another-example-of-bias/.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Rangarajan, Sinduja. "Hey Siri—why don't you understand more people who talk like me?" (in en-US). https://www.motherjones.com/media/2021/02/digital-assistants-accents-english-race-google-siri-alexa/.
- ↑ Marsden, Rhodri (2021-11-07). "Accents and AI: how speech recognition software could lead to new forms of discrimination" (in en). https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/comment/2021/11/07/accents-and-ai-how-speech-recognition-software-could-lead-to-new-forms-of-discrimination/.
- ↑ Lopez-Lloreda, Claudia (October 2020). "How Speech-Recognition Software Discriminates against Minority Voices" (in en). https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-speech-recognition-software-discriminates-against-minority-voices/.
- ↑ "Making Public | Say It Ain't So: A Simple Speech-To-Text Experiment With Serious Implications". https://networkcultures.org/makingpublic/2019/05/28/say-it-aint-so-a-simple-speech-to-text-experiment-with-serious-implications/.
- ↑ Usher, Nikki (2022). "Book Review: Your Computer Is on Fire, by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, and Kavita Philip (Eds.)" (in en). Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 99 (1): 334–336. doi:10.1177/10776990211042592. ISSN 1077-6990. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10776990211042592.
- ↑ "Hitting the Books: Bias is behind AI assistants' failure to understand accents" (in en-US). 2021-04-03. https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-your-computer-is-on-fire-halcyon-lawrence-mit-press-153013155.html.
- ↑ Fitzpatrick, KellyAnn (2023-10-31). "In memory of Dr. Halcyon Lawrence" (in en-US). https://redmonk.com/kfitzpatrick/2023/10/31/in-memory-of-dr-halcyon-lawrence/.
- ↑ "Winners for 2022 CPTSC Research Grant for Antiracist Programs and Pedagogies – CPTSC" (in en). https://cptsc.org/blog/2023/02/07/winners-for-2022-cptsc-research-grant-for-antiracist-programs-and-pedagogies/.
- ↑ Dammeyer, Sarah (2025-01-23). "Special Section dedicated to Dr. Halcyon Lawrence: "Please Continue This Good Work!": A Letter to Dr. Halcyon Lawrence from a Brief Friend". Commun. Des. Q. Rev. 12 (2): 98–99. doi:10.1145/3655727.3655737. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3655727.3655737.
- ↑ Hutter, Liz (2025-01-23). "Honoring Dr. Halcyon Lawrence's Legacy in the Technical Communication Classroom". Commun. Des. Q. Rev. 12 (2): 100–101. doi:10.1145/3655727.3655738. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3655727.3655738.
- ↑ Mainaly, Shiva Hari (2025-01-23). "A Glimpse of Lawrence's Legacy: From "Siri Discipline" to Disciplining Artificial Intelligence". Commun. Des. Q. Rev. 12 (2): 102–104. doi:10.1145/3655727.3655739. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3655727.3655739.
- ↑ Neefe, Lauren (2025-01-23). "Dr. Halcyon Lawrence: A Resounding Legacy". Commun. Des. Q. Rev. 12 (2): 105–107. doi:10.1145/3655727.3655740. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3655727.3655740.
- ↑ Ojedele-Adejumo, Temitope (2025-01-23). "Dr. Halcyon Lawrence's "Siri Disciplines": Examining Accented English and Pedagogical Implications of Biased Technologies through an African Diasporic Lens". Commun. Des. Q. Rev. 12 (2): 108–110. doi:10.1145/3655727.3655741. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3655727.3655741.
 |  |
