Congratulations to Paula Reyero-Lobo, who was passed her viva on 18 November 2024 for her thesis, “Addressing Bias in Hate Speech Detection: Enhancing Target Group Identification with Semantics.”  

Paula’s research explored how to reduce bias in hate speech detection systems, particularly in identifying content targeting specific groups. AI systems often misclassify content from certain groups as hate speech or fail to effectively moderate harmful content directed at them. Paula tackled this challenge by investigating how semantics, including knowledge graphs and linguistic resources, can improve both human and machine understanding of the non-standard, slang, and domain-specific language frequently used in hate speech. Her findings offer a significant contribution to advancing fairer and more effective AI moderation tools.  

Her thesis was supervised by Miriam Fernandez, Enrico Daga, and Harith Alani, with her defence committee including Haiming Liu (external), John Domingue (internal), and Soraya Kouadri (chair).  

Looking ahead, Paula will join the Centre for Protecting Women Online at The Open University as an AI consultant. Working with the Ethical and Responsible Tech/AI Team, she will engage in collaborative research to address the unique challenges to women’s safety in online spaces.  

We are excited to see the continued impact of Paula’s work and wish her every success in this important field!