Research Fellow: ESRC Project ‘Accent Bias and Domestic Abuse Victimisation (ABDAVic)

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.

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.

Applicants will be expected to be proficient in survey design and implementation, ideally with the university’s approved survey tool Qualtrics. They will also be expected to be proficient in either R or Python for statistical analysis, including data visualisation and mixed effect regression. They will also make written contributions to conference abstracts and talks, and eventual journal articles stemming from the project; at least one of these articles will feature the research assistant as lead author. While this is a sociolinguistics project, the position is open to applicants with PhDs in experimental social research more broadly, including applicants from fields like sociology, psychology and political science. Applicants with experience working in the areas of language and ethnicity and/or language and social class are preferred. Experience in phonetics and proficiency in Praat and Audacity is also desirable.

What We Can Offer You

As a university we aim to create an environment where everyone can thrive and are proactive in fostering a culture of inclusion, respect and equality of opportunity. We believe that we can only truly meet our objectives if we are reflective of society, so we are passionate about creating a working environment in which you are free to bring your whole self to work. With a generous holiday allowance as well as additional university closure days we are committed to supporting our staff and students and open to a flexible working approach.

If you wish to discuss the role in more detail, please email Dr Matthew Hunt ([email protected]) for more information.

Please provide your CV and cover letter as part of your application.