The conversation discusses what an ethnographic or anthropological approach can bring to political sociology on the causes and consequences of Brexit in the UK, particularly in questioning the simplifications of dominant public opinion research. It points to the lack of awareness of post-colonial approaches to race and multiculturalism in such mainstream understandings, outlining the alternative perspectives found in Northern Exposure’s study of four large towns and small cities in the North of England. The discussion goes on to explore the innovative co-productive approach to impact developed by the project, whose output included local community engagement, videoed policy debates, and a full-length documentary film alongside conventional academic writing. The project Principal Investigator argues for a more critical constructivist epistemology in our understanding of UK politics during the era of Brexit, COVID and after.

Voice identity conversion and cloning technologies use artificial intelligence to generate the auditory likeness of a specific human talker’s vocal identity. Given the deeply personal nature of voices, the widening availability of these technologies brings both opportunities and risks for human society. This article outlines key concepts and findings from psychological research on self-voice and other-voice perception that have a bearing on the potential impacts of synthetic voice likenesses on human listeners. Additional insights from speech and language therapy, human–computer interaction, ethics, and the law are incorporated to examine the broader implications of emergent and future voice cloning technologies.