Stuart Middleton

Dr Stuart Middleton is an Associate Professor at the University of Southampton, affiliated with the School of Electronics and Computer Science within the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. He is a member of the Agents, Interaction and Complexity research group, the Centre for Machine Intelligence, and the Centre for Democratic Futures. His research focuses on Natural Language Processing (NLP), particularly information extraction and human-in-the-loop NLP, with applications in law enforcement, defence, mental health, and environmental science.

His research interests include Natural Language Processing, Information Extraction, Human-in-the-loop NLP, Active Learning, Adversarial Training, Rationale-based Learning, and Argument Mining. He specializes in scenarios with limited or fragmented data, developing methods for few/zero-shot learning, graph-based models, and multimodal analysis. His work spans domains such as mental health, digital ethics (e.g., sharenting), defence, and climate science.

The recent publications highlight a strong trend in applying NLP to societal challenges, including mental health monitoring through social media, ethical AI, multimodal argumentation in political debates, and climate data analysis. His work combines technical innovation in prompt engineering, summarization, and graph-based modeling with real-world impact.

• AI for defence: readiness, resilience and mental health (2024)
• Extraction and summarization of suicidal ideation evidence (2024)
• Sharenting and social media properties (2024)
• Implementing responsible innovation (2024)
• ConversationMoC: mood change detection (2024)

Dr Middleton is actively involved in PhD supervision and academic leadership as Deputy Director of the UKRI MINDS Centre for Doctoral Training. He supervises multiple PhD students working on NLP and AI projects. He has secured research funding from ESRC and EPSRC for projects such as ProTecThem2.0, SafeSpacesNLP, and GloSAT.

He leads the Natural Language Processing modules COMP3225 (UG) and COMP6253 (PG) and mentors students in NLP research. He is a Fellow of The Alan Turing Institute and a member of the EPSRC peer review college, contributing to national research strategy and evaluation.

His research is conducted within interdisciplinary teams, including collaborations with criminologists, social scientists, and environmental researchers. He is part of the Agents, Interaction and Complexity group and contributes to the Centre for Machine Intelligence and Centre for Democratic Futures, focusing on AI systems that interact meaningfully with humans and society.