PhD Studentships

Job Vacancies

Applications are invited for PhD studentships in linguistics and speech sciences at Newcastle University. We encourage applicants who are interested in all aspects of speech perception, production and learning. Studentships, to start in October 2019, will be awarded via open competition for two doctoral training partnerships:

  • AHRC Northern Bridge Consortium, deadline Wednesday 9th January 2019.
  • ESRC Northern Ireland and North East Doctoral Training Partnership (NINEDTP), deadline Friday 18th January 2019.

Please contact the following supervisors if you are interested in their broad research areas:

Ghada Khattab

ghada.khattab[at]newcastle.ac.uk
PhD supervision interests: Monolingual and bilingual phonological acquisition, accent/dialect acquisition, L2 phonology, and bilingualism and cognition.
For more details, see:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/linguistics/staff/profil/ghadakhattab.html#research

Jalal Al-Tamimi

jalal.al-Tamimi[at]newcastle.ac.uk
PhD supervision interests: L1/L2 phonology, speech production and perception, laboratory phonology, speech classification and recognition.
For more details, see:
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/ecls/staff/profile/jalalal-tamimi.html#research

Laurence White

laurence.white[at]newcastle.ac.uk
PhD supervision interests: Prosody in speech perception and production, first and second language acquisition, developmental and acquired language disorders. For more details, see:
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/ecls/staff/profile/laurencewhite.html#research

Danielle Turton

Danielle.Turton[at]newcastle.ac.uk
PhD supervision interests: Phonological variation, diachronic phonology, language variation and change, ultrasound tongue imaging, phonetics-phonology interface, laboratory phonology.
For more details, see: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/staff/profile/danielleturton.html#research

The AHRC Northern Bridge Consortium for Doctoral Training Partnership

(NBCDTP) offers tuition fees and £14,777 per annum funding for 42 months (http://www.northernbridge.ac.uk/). Award-holders may extend their studentship to pursue an approved research training programme or to undertake a placement by a further 6 months, and successful applicants can apply for additional funding during their studentship to support their research costs and individual training needs. In addition to the standard PhD pathway, students can apply under the collaborative doctoral pathway, through which applicants develop a research project in collaboration with a partner organisation, and spend a substantial portion of their doctoral study at the partner organisation.

The ESRC Northern Ireland and North East Doctoral Training Partnership

(NINEDTP) offer +3, +3.5, 1+3 and, for Language Based Area Studies only, 2+3 awards (https://www.ninedtp.ac.uk/). The awards cover tuition fees and a stipend of £14,770 per year for the duration of the degree. Award-holders may also apply for research training support grants, internships and placements, and overseas fieldwork and difficult language training, as well as overseas institutional visits. However, these need to be laid out clearly at the application stage and are considered on a case-by-case basis. In addition to the standard PhD pathway, students can apply under the collaborative doctoral pathway, through which applicants develop a research project in collaboration with a partner organisation.

Journal of Phonetics VOT special edition

Proceedings, ,

Off the back of their success in winning the Peter Ladefoged Prize at BAAP 2018, Jalal and Ghada have now had their work on VOT of Arabic stops published in the Journal of Phonetics special edition ‘Marking 50 Years of Research on Voice Onset Time’. Check it out here – “Acoustic correlates of the voicing contrast in Lebanese Arabic singleton and geminate stops”

Highlights:

  • The voicing contrast in Lebanese Arabic interacts with gemination in complex ways.
  • Closure duration is key for the voicing and gemination contrasts in medial position.
  • Voicing patterns point to [voice] as primary and [tense] as secondary feature.
  • More devoicing is seen in voiced geminates than singletons.
  • Release properties of voiced geminates align more with lenis than fortis languages.

Postdoc Position at University of Lisbon

Job Vacancies, ,

Postdoc position in experimental research on language development

Applications are invited for a full-time postdoctoral position in the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon.

The postdoctoral fellow will work in the Phonetics and Phonology lab and the Lisbon Baby Lab (http://labfon.letras.ulisboa.pt/babylab/ ) with Prof. Sonia Frota and her team on projects relating to early language development in typical, at-risk, and impaired populations. Primary duties include active engagement in the projects and the lab’s research, including knowledge transfer and training and knowledge dissemination, designing and conducting experiments, preparing findings for publication and oral presentation, laboratory management, and working with graduate and undergraduate students. Salary will be in accordance with the Portuguese Science Foundation salary scale, specifically €1495 per month (net) (http://alfa.fct.mctes.pt/apoios/bolsas/valores), plus supplemental insurances. Financial support for travelling/settling is provided for researchers from outside Portugal (in the amount of €1000). The post is available for 10 months, eventually renewed until the end of the project should it be extended. The successful candidate is expected to start January 1, 2019.

The Phonetics and Phonology lab and the Lisbon Baby Lab are part of the Center of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon. The lab’s facilities include SMI RED500 and SR Research EyeLink 1000 eye trackers and a Neuroscan 64 channel EEG with the Quik cap system. The lab works with a network of collaborating partners within and outside academia (e.g., Psychology School, Medical School, hospitals, private associations, nurseries). The postdoctoral fellow will also benefit from and participate in the Annual Summer Training in Experimental Methods organised by the lab (http://labfon.letras.ulisboa.pt/summerschool/2018/en/ ).

Qualifications:

Applicants must have a Ph.D. in a relevant field, such as neurolinguistics, language acquisition, psychology, or cognitive neuroscience, and previous experience in experimental research in language perception and language processing. Good knowledge of at least some of the experimental paradigms used with EEG/ERP and/or Eye-tracking and their implementation, as well as of data extraction routines and analysis, is required. Previous experience in infant speech perception research or research with clinical populations is desirable. A background in statistics, applied mathematics, or programming skills will be a plus. Proficiency in English is required. Knowledge of Portuguese or of other Romance language (e.g., Catalan, Spanish, Italian, French) is an advantage.

To Apply:

Please e-mail your CV, a motivation letter (max. 2 pages), a copy of your personal identity document, of your PhD certificate and of your PhD thesis, together with one representative publication and names and contact details of two referees, to labfon@letras.ulisboa.pt and sfrota@campus.ul.pt

Closing date: November 23, 2018

Contact Name: Prof. Sonia Frota

More details available at http://www.eracareers.pt/opportunities/index.aspx?task=global&jobId=105433

Phonetics and Phonology on tour… #BAAP2018

Conferences, , , ,

On 12-14th April 2018 a number of us from the Phonetics and Phonology Research Group went to the BAAP 2018 Colloquium at the University of Kent. We had 5 posters (Dan, Wael, Hajar, Hana, Nief) and 3 talks (Jalal & Ghada, Jalal, Ourooba) over the 3 days, and also learnt a lot and met some fascinating people, all in the beautiful setting of the historic cathedral city of Canterbury (I’m completely biased, it’s my hometown).

Twitter was very active in the 3 days and I’ve created a ‘Moment’ which documents some highlights. Take a look at the link below.

Particular congratulations should go to Ghada and Jalal, who won the Peter Ladefoged Prize, for the work that best captures the spirit of the work of the late Peter Ladefoged.