Tobias Thejll-Madsen

Teaching Fellow in Interdisciplinary Data Methods

Biography

Background

Tobias Thejll-Madsen finished his PhD with the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Socially Intelligent Artificial Agents at the University of Glasgow in 2025.  Here his research focused on theoretical and methodological challenges in affective computing - an interdisciplinary area that seeks to equip computers with the ability to recognise, model, and respond to human emotion.  His work seeks to develop rigorous testing paradigms built on strong theoretical foundations from psychology to ensure that claims about the abilities of different artificial intelligence tools are accurate and grounded.  Prior to his PhD, Tobias completed his MSc in Human Cognitive Neuropsychology with the Univeristy of Edinburgh, where he explored human social decision making through computational models of cognition.  

Outside of his psychology and computer science work, Tobias has a keen interest in education research and in developing educational resources.  Prior to his MSc, Tobias authored the Reflection Toolkit and the Curriculum Toolkit for Embedding Student Development, Employability and Careers together with Dr Gavin McCabe.  Further, as a part of a number of research assistant positions held with the University throughout his PhD, Tobias has worked on improving feedback processes, looked at students' use of lecture recordings, and designed and helped write Edinburgh Gobal's Transitions and Mentoring Toolkit.

Currently, Tobias is a Teaching Fellow associated with the Interdiscplinary Futures (MA Hons) degree with Edinburgh Futures Institute.  Here he is responsible for a wide range of teaching responsibilities primarily focused on methods teaching and reflective practice. 

Qualifications

  • MA in Psychology (University of Edinburgh, 2018)
  • MSc in Human Cognitive Neuropsychology (University of Edinburgh, 2020)
  • PhD in Psychology and Computer Science (Univeristy of Glasgow, 2025)

Undergraduate teaching

I teach and develop content for a series of courses in the Interdisciplinary Futures degree:

  • Researching Global Challenges 1
  • Researching Global Challenges 2 (Course Organiser)
  • Interdisciplinary Research 
  • Reflections on Interdisciplinary Practice 1
  • Reflections on Interdisciplinary Practice 2
  • Reflections on Interdisciplinary Practice 3
  • Students as Change Agents

Further, I am in the process of developing a new course looking at Human-AI (artificial intelligence) interaction.

Research summary

My research has two distinct branches: affective computing and AI safety research and educational research.  As teaching is my primary focus now, I do not have a lot time to devote to either, but keep myself busy collaborating with researchers from University of Glasgow (AI safety), University of Texas at Austin (LLM-enabled emotional support; LLM = Large Language Models), and Northeastern and Thammasat University (facial expressions of emotion and psychological abilities of LLMs). 

Current research interests

I am very interested in rigorous testing and safe deployment of social artificial intelligence. Here my work has sought to use causal modelling to investigate and criticise current models of facial expressions of emotions. Currently, simplisitic assumptions about the relationship between emotional states and non-verbal communication leads to diverging research findings and AI tools that 'claim' to be able to 'read' people's emotions. While I'm still interested in this; the rapid deployment of LLMs as backends for social artificial agents has guided my focus to explore how to systematically and accurately evaluate such models' abilities in the affective and emotional realm. On the educational side, I'm looking to get some research started in serious games in the summer of 2026.

I believe in taking an active part in both outreach and the academic community.

Outreach:

  • I organised the Pint Of Science Festival in Glasgow for two year (2024, 2025), and was a volunteer with the festival in 2023. 

 

Professional activies:

  • Submission Chair (International Society For Research on Emotions Annual Conference, 2022)
  • Website Chair (International Conference for Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction, 2022)

Reviewer:

  • International Journal of Social Robotics
  • Nature Scientific Reports

  • International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction

  • Annual Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
  • International Conference for Social Robotics
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