Eligibility: UK/EU students who apply to study for a PhD.
Application deadline: 31st October 2013.
Value of award: Full fees and up to £10,000 maintenance per year
Start date: 1st January 2014
Duration: 3 years

As part of the new Language at Leeds initiative, the School of Modern Languages and Cultures is offering one full-fee studentship to conduct a PhD by research on a topic in linguistics or phonetics. The studentship will include maintenance of up to £10,000 per annum for full-time students. This will be paid partly as a bursary and partly as payment for up to 250 hours per year – for research assistance to staff members within the Language at Leeds research hub engaged in linguistic research. Research assistance is likely to include support in running experiments, using specialised software, and managing local research facilities in the Human Communications Laboratory. In the first year of the scholarship the bursary payment will be £8147.50 and the payment for research assistance will be up to £1852.50 (depending on actual hours worked).

Candidates must submit a full PhD proposal for a topic that can be supervised by staff in Linguistics and Phonetics. In addition, candidates should be able to demonstrate the following:

• Excellent IT skills. Familiarity with common computer programming languages and experience of writing scripts and macros for applications used in linguistic and phonetic research are highly desirable.
• Good quantitative analysis skills. Familiarity with common statistics programmes, such as SPSS, Matlab or R, and experience of conducting quantitative linguistic analysis are highly desirable.
• An interest in supporting experimental, instrumental and computational linguistic research. Experience of running experiments, using specialised software and using linguistic or phonetic equipment are desirable.

Applications will be considered on both academic merit and skills offered. You can find listings of expertise in Linguistics and Phonetics on our people pages.

To apply for this scholarship, please click on the ‘Apply’ link below.

First apply for a place on the PhD programme. Please note that the programme you need to select on the online application form is ‘PhD Modern Languages’. The online application will generate your student ID number which is essential for the next stage of the application process. For this, complete the scholarship application form and return it to the address given on the form by 31st October 2013.

If you have any queries regarding the application process or about research degree study at Leeds in general please email smlcpgr@leeds.ac.uk. For further information about Language at Leeds please email Professor Janet Watson (j.c.e.watson@leeds.ac.uk).