Christian LicoppeProfessor

Research themes :

Trained in history and sociology of science and technology, Christian Licoppe is interested in conversation analysis and multimodal interaction analysis, and more generally ethnographic studies of multi-participant interaction in mobile and institutional settings. He has developed an extensive research program on the use of mobile communication on the move, linking communication and mobility studies. In the course of this research program, he has shown how mobile communication supports forms of “connected presence” and how location aware mobile technologies and the way they promote fleeting encounters between “pseudonymous strangers” (who unlike the strangers of urban anthropology, may never have met may still know something about one another through mobile digital technologies). It also led him to studies of the organization of message-based conversations in mobile dating, as a particular instance of such encounters, marked by a continuous tension between distance and intimacy. He has developed several research programs on video-mediated communication, showing how the “talking heads” configuration accounted for the observable order of video-mediated conversations, and the ensuing importance of “camera actions” in video-mediated communication. One of these programs involved the long-term study of the introduction of video links in French criminal courts, leading to in depth understandings of courtroom interaction in mediated settings. An extension of this research in asylum proceedings branched into interpreting studies and analyses of the interpreter’s agency in multilingual courtroom proceedings. His interest in VMC-mediated settings, from Skype interpersonal communication to live video streams led to the study of ostensive practices, and the tension between seeing and telling in human interaction. He is currently developing new research projects on human-robot interaction, and on the introduction of IA in judicial decisions.