At the ATSIP PsychTech Conference, QuestionPro unveiled three AI-powered research platforms that promise to change how researchers across UK and Irish universities design studies, collect data, and generate insight. The keynote marked more than a product launch. It signalled a wider shift in the relationship between psychology, research infrastructure, and artificial intelligence
When a Conference Becomes a Turning Point
[LIMERICK, Ireland, 24 June 2026] There are moments in the history of any discipline when the tools available to researchers stop constraining what is possible and start expanding it. For the psychology and behavioural science community gathered at the University of Limerick’s PsychTech Conference on 24 June 2026, this may prove to be one of those moments.
In a keynote attended by delegates from universities across the United Kingdom and Ireland, QuestionPro introduced three platforms to the ATSIP community: QuestionPro MCP, QuestionPro Voice AI, and QuestionPro Listen AI. Each addresses a different point of friction in the research lifecycle. Together, they form an intelligent research ecosystem designed to support study design, data collection, qualitative interviewing, and analysis at scale.
“The question is no longer whether AI will transform psychological research. The question is who shapes how that transformation unfolds.”
The conference took place on one of Ireland’s most distinctive campuses. The University of Limerick sits across both banks of the River Shannon and is recognized across the British Isles for its architecture and its investment in research infrastructure. Its Living Bridge, a 350-meter pedestrian crossing above the Shannon, has become a symbol of the campus’s commitment to connecting people and ideas.
A Setting Worthy of the Moment
The University of Limerick provided more than a venue. It provided an atmosphere. Set across both banks of the River Shannon, the campus is recognised for its architecture, open academic spaces, riverside walkways, and the Living Bridge, a 350-metre pedestrian crossing above the Shannon.
For a conference focused on the future of psychological research, the setting mattered. The campus reflects the same idea that shaped the day’s conversations: thoughtful environments create better conditions for learning, collaboration, and discovery.
“To present at the University of Limerick is to present in a place that takes ideas seriously.”
THE CONFERENCE HOSTS
The event was organised and hosted by two members of the University of Limerick’s Department of Psychology, whose leadership shaped both the program and the collegial culture of the day.
Sandra O’Brien
Sr. Technical Officer, Department of Psychology, University of Limerick
ATSIP PsychTech Conference Host
Kevin O’Malley
Sr. Technical Officer, Department of Psychology, University of Limerick
ATSIP PsychTech Conference Host
The Three Launches: What They Are and Why They Matter
QuestionPro used the ATSIP keynote to introduce three platforms, each designed to address a specific challenge in psychological and behavioural research workflows.
QuestionPro MCP: Connecting Research Workflows to Intelligence
QuestionPro MCP brings Model Context Protocol capabilities into the research workflow. It allows QuestionPro’s survey and research platform to connect directly with AI models, including large language models, in a structured and standards-based way.
For researchers, this means natural language instructions can translate into real research actions. A psychology researcher designing a cognitive load experiment, for example, can build question branches, apply randomisation logic, configure timer-based stimuli, and export cleaned data without navigating complex menus or writing code.
The value is not only convenience. MCP reduces the cognitive overhead of platform management and helps researchers focus on research design, behavioural theory, and interpretation. It also supports interoperability for institutions running multiple digital research systems, including learning management systems, lab tools, and data pipelines.
For university research offices managing several projects at once, this can reduce integration complexity and support more efficient research operations.
QuestionPro Voice AI: Qualitative Research at Scale
Voice AI addresses one of qualitative psychology’s most persistent challenges: the human cost of conducting in-depth interviews at scale.
The platform uses conversational AI agents to conduct structured and semi-structured interviews with participants. These agents can probe responses, adapt questions based on participant answers, and capture nuanced verbal data across multiple languages.
For research programmes across UK and Irish universities, the implications are significant. Studies that previously required months of fieldwork, interviewer training, and large coordination budgets can now run faster, more consistently, and at greater scale.
Ethical safeguards, including AI disclosure and participant consent workflows, are built into the platform to support the governance requirements that matter to academic research teams and institutional review boards.
“Qualitative research no longer has to choose between depth and scale. Voice AI makes both possible simultaneously.”
For the ATSIP community, where behavioural and psychological research often depends on rich qualitative data, this capability opens new possibilities that time and budget constraints have historically limited.
QuestionPro Listen AI: The Future of Depth Research
ListenAI is an AI-moderated interview platform purpose-built for deep qualitative research. It conducts in-depth interviews at scale while allowing the AI moderator to adapt its line of questioning in real time based on participant responses.
The platform is designed to capture not only what participants say but also how they respond. It supports major languages and can assist institutions conducting cross-cultural studies across the UK, Ireland, and international participant groups.
ListenAI also brings together behavioural and emotional intelligence. The platform incorporates eye-tracking technology, helping researchers understand where participants’ attention is directed during the interview process. Its emotional intelligence layer analyses vocal tone, response latency, linguistic patterns, and micro-expressions to generate emotional signal data alongside qualitative content.
For researchers working in areas such as emotional regulation, cognitive bias, social perception, or clinical psychology, this creates a richer view of participant response. Studies that once required specialist equipment, observational researchers, and extensive post-processing can be coordinated through a single integrated platform.
“ListenAI does not simply record what participants say. It understands how they feel as they say it, in any language, anywhere in the world.”
Importantly, Listen AI is designed with transparency at its centre. It provides audit trails for thematic categorisations, emotional signal classifications, and attention maps, allowing researchers to interrogate, challenge, and override the platform’s interpretations. For peer-reviewed publication workflows, that transparency is essential.
WHY THE ATSIP COMMUNITY
The decision to launch these platforms at the ATSIP PsychTech Conference was deliberate. ATSIP sits at the intersection of psychological research, pedagogy, technical practice, and methodological innovation. It brings together the people who will shape how AI research tools enter academic practice. Launching to this audience signals an important position. QuestionPro is not presenting these platforms as commercial tools that happen to be useful for universities. It is positioning them as research infrastructure built with the methodological standards of psychological science in mind.
Universities across the UK and Ireland are under pressure to deliver impactful research with tighter budgets, train students in current methodologies, and compete for funding in an increasingly demanding landscape. AI-enabled research platforms that reduce friction across study design, data collection, and analysis can support all three priorities. Questions about AI in psychological research are legitimate and unresolved. Algorithmic bias in data collection, interpretability of machine-generated analyses, and the validity of AI-conducted interviews relative to human ones all require rigorous empirical investigation.
What the ATSIP conference demonstrated is that the academic community is ready to engage those questions seriously: not to resist the tools, but to shape how they are used, evaluated, and improved. The emergence of reliable AI research infrastructure does not reduce the researcher’s role. It redefines it, shifting the work from the mechanical execution of data collection toward research design, ethical oversight, and interpretive analysis.
The Broader Context: AI and the Future of Psychological Research
It would be a mistake to discuss these launches without acknowledging the wider debate around AI in psychological research. The concerns are real. Questions about algorithmic bias, AI-mediated data collection, machine-generated thematic analysis, and the validity of AI-conducted interviews compared with human interviews deserve serious empirical investigation.
But the opportunity is equally real. Psychological research has always evolved alongside methodological innovation. New tools have repeatedly allowed researchers to ask new kinds of questions, reach new participant groups, and analyse behaviour in more sophisticated ways.
The emergence of reliable, scalable AI research tools does not diminish the researcher’s role. It redefines it. The work shifts from the mechanical execution of data collection toward higher-order responsibilities: research design, ethical oversight, methodological scrutiny, and interpretive analysis.
“The emergence of AI research tools does not diminish the researcher’s role. It redefines it.”
The ATSIP PsychTech Conference, and the QuestionPro launches within it, represented a serious engagement with that transition. This was not a celebration of technology for its own sake. It was a practical conversation about what becomes possible when AI is applied thoughtfully to real research problems.
WHAT COMES NEXT
For researchers, heads of department, and research directors across UK and Irish universities, the next questions are practical. How do these tools integrate with ethics approval processes? What training do research teams need? How should AI-assisted findings be presented in publications, internal reports, and grant applications?
The answers will emerge as early adopters in the ATSIP community begin working with these platforms in real research settings. The University of Limerick’s hosting of this launch positions Ireland as an early centre in what may become a broader shift in research infrastructure across the UK and Ireland.
Institutions that engage early, develop protocols, and train researchers in responsible use will be better positioned as these tools mature.
CONCLUSION
The PsychTech Conference at the University of Limerick was a significant event for the psychology research community in the UK and Ireland. The QuestionPro keynote transformed it into a moment of genuine reflection on how human researchers and artificial intelligence can work together.
QuestionPro MCP, Voice AI, and Listen AI are not simply product launches. They are the opening moves in a longer collaboration between a research technology company and an academic community that takes methodology seriously.
The ATSIP community, with its depth of expertise and commitment to rigorous practice, is exactly the right community to shape what that collaboration becomes.
The work of understanding AI, human psychology, and the relationship between them continues. It just got considerably more interesting.
A Note of Thanks to ATSIP and the University of Limerick
QuestionPro extends its sincere gratitude to ATSIP, the University of Limerick, and the wider team behind the PsychTech Conference for the hospitality, professionalism, and warmth shown throughout the event.
A special thank you goes to Sandra O’Brien and Kevin O’Malley from the University of Limerick’s Department of Psychology for their leadership and coordination. The conference reflected the best of an academic community: rigorous, generous, collegial, and open to new ideas.
QuestionPro also thanks the broader ATSIP membership and all attendees who engaged with the keynote, asked thoughtful questions, and continued the discussion throughout the day. These conversations helped sharpen the thinking around AI in psychological research and reinforced why the ATSIP community is so important.
For QuestionPro, the opportunity to introduce QuestionPro MCP, Voice AI, and Listen AI at the University of Limerick was genuinely meaningful. The hope is that this marks the beginning of a sustained relationship with ATSIP and the wider UK and Irish psychology research community.
ABOUT ATSIP
The Association of Technical Staff in Psychology (ATSIP) is the professional association representing technical and research support staff in psychology departments across the United Kingdom and Ireland. ATSIP promotes professional development, methodological innovation, and community among those who support and advance psychological research.
