Research Assistant

The department of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics (LCL) at the University of Southampton has a strong research culture covering a broad range of linguistics disciplines, including but not limited to sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, language acquisition, corpus linguistics, and language education. In addition to our linguistics contingent, LCL is also home to researchers engaging in cultural and area studies linked to the languages taught in the department including French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

Role Overview

The advertised role is a fixed-term 12-month research-only position supporting the project ‘Accent Bias and Domestic Abuse Victimisation (ABDVic)’, funded by an ESRC New Investigator grant and led by principal investigator Dr Matthew Hunt. The ABDAVic project is an experimental sociolinguistics project aimed at uncovering possible linguistic discrimination of domestic abuse victims, with a specific focus on biases against classed and racialised accents. The project will involve two stages. Stage One will involve conducting matched guise-style experiments with members of the general population, while Stage Two will involve conducting those same experiments with trained domestic abuse support workers. The role is primarily to support design and implementation of these experiments – including creating auditory stimuli – as well as analysis and dissemination of the results. This role can be optionally completed remotely, with the occasional visit to Southampton or travel for conferences.