Critical Interactional Competence Network (CritIC Net)
Developing better social interaction and social relationships in the posthuman era
25th June, 2026 (UCL)
The project team organized a project completion event, “Being human in the AI era: CritIC as interactional criticality”, on 25 June 2026. The event took place at the Jeremy Bentham Room, Wilkins Building, University College London. In the morning we had a presentation of the key outcomes of the project and a provocation panel discussion with a stellar line-up including:
Carey Jewitt, Professor of Learning and Technology, UCL
Constant Leung, Professor of Educational Linguistics, KCL
Li Wei, Professor of Applied Linguistics, UCL
Zhu Hua, Professor of Language Learning and Intercultural Communication, UCL
In the afternoon, David Wei Dai, Li Wei and Simin Ren facilitated a research methods workshop based on methodological innovations from the project. The workshop was designed for PhD students and researchers interested in exploring how to analyze moments in interaction when speakers display CritIC.
The event was well attended by over 70 participants joining in-person and online from both academia and industry.
9th October, 2025 (CritIC First Online Event Zoom)
The session featured three talks that explored criticality in social interaction through the lens of time.
Dr. Simin Ren, Prof. Li Wei, and I presented our recent paper examining how a physiotherapist develops professional interactional competence over a 14-month period. Prof. Yongyan Zheng from Fudan University discussed her exciting new project on human–AI relations through semester-long interactions. Keyu Liu, a PhD student at UCL co-supervised by Prof. Carey Jewitt, Prof. Sara Price, and myself, showcased her innovative research on critical engagement with digital touch communication across generations.
We were very fortunate to have Prof. Carey Jewitt serve as our discussant. She drew out some important themes in the interrelated relationships among time, criticality, human sociality and technology.
18th June, 2025 (Warwick)
Keynote on Critical Interactional Competence (CritIC) in Human-AI Interaction at the Warwick International Conference in Applied Linguistics (WICAL).
11th April, 2025 (Vienna)
Invited talk at the Institute for Intercultural Communication in the Vienna University of Economics and Business on Critical Interactional Competence in AI powered intercultural professional communication training.
22th March, 2025 (Denver)
Presentation titled “Liquidizing Interaction: Repositioning Interactional Competence for Transpositioning” at the American Association for Applied Linguistics conference in Denver, USA.