Postdoctoral Research Associate in Sociolinguistics (News UK)

Location

The Stephen A Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6GG

Contract type

Fixed Term (10 months) from 1 March 2026 until 31 December 2026

About the role

This fixed term, non-renewable, one-year postdoctoral position will support continuing analysis of data from the new London English Corpus, which has been developed as part of the ESRC project Generations of London English: Dialect and Social Change in Real Time.

Project website: https://generationsoflondonenglish.org/

Led by Principal Investigator Professor Devyani Sharma, the project and corpus represent the largest cross-sectional study of London English. It enables real-time analysis of the first two generations of major new dialects in London. The project offers researchers, teachers, journalists, writers, students, and the wider public insights into how language changes and into the social dynamics of contemporary Western cities. The London English Corpus includes samples of speech from several neighbourhoods, age groups, social class backgrounds, and ethnicities.

The advertised role will combine scholarly research in sociolinguistics with opportunities for professional development, working with partner organisations such as the British Library. Analysis will likely include tracking dialect change in large-scale real-time data over generations in London, testing theoretical predictions, analysing speech repertoires and play interactions of children, adolescents, and older speakers, examining cognitive factors such as control in these dynamics, and testing the role of accent in processing non-linguistic information.

About you

You will hold a PhD in Linguistics or a related field and have a track record of outstanding research in variationist sociolinguistics, sociophonetics, and other areas of sociolinguistics. You will have advanced skills working with relevant software, in particular Praat and R. You will have experience with devising methods for complex data sets, multivariate statistics, writing up research results for different audiences, and managing an academic workload independently. You will have good communications skills and an aptitude for collaboration and interdisciplinary and public engagement work.

The duties and skills required are described in further detail in the job description.

Application process

Applications for this vacancy are to be made online via www.recruit.ox.ac.uk and Vacancy ID 184373 or via this link direct to the advertisement where the job description and access to the online recruitment system can also be found.

For your online application, you will be required to upload your curriculum vitae and a supporting statement, setting out how you meet the selection criteria for the post, using examples of your skills and experience. As part of your application, you will be asked to provide details of two referees and indicate whether we can contact them now.

For further details, please refer to the how to apply section of the job description. Any further enquires may be directed to Theresa Phillips at recruitment@ell.ox.ac.uk

The closing date for applications is 12.00 noon on 4 February 2025. Only applications received before this time can be considered.

Shortlisting will take place on or near to 10 February 2026 and interviews will be held on 18 February 2026.

Please quote Vacancy ID 184373 on all correspondence.

Committed to equality and valuing diversity

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