Research Associate in Language Variation and Change in English
Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
The Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics is seeking to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Associate to support Professor David Willis and the CURLEW Project (Census of Urban and Rural Language in England and Wales), for which an SNSF (Swiss National Science Foundation) grant has been awarded.
The primary role of the post is to lead data analysis that will help us fully understand how the socio-economic and demographic changes of the past half-century have steered language change across England and Wales.
The post is for a fixed-term period of 48 months starting August 2026 (or as soon as possible thereafter).
What We Offer
* An excellent contributory pension scheme
* 38 days annual leave
* A comprehensive range of childcare services
* Family leave schemes
* Discounted bus travel and Season Ticket travel loans
* Membership to a variety of social and sports clubs
About the Role
Reporting to the Oxford Principal Investigator, David Willis, the post holder will be a member of the Oxford-based group carrying out research for CURLEW: Census of Urban and Rural Language in England and Wales. CURLEW is a four-year project (from August 2026) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation as part of the International Co-Investigator Scheme with the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). It is a collaboration between David Britain (Bern, PI), Paul Foulkes (York), Adrian Leemann (Bern) and David Willis (Oxford), with teams in each of the participating institutions. The aim of CURLEW is to conduct a census of urban and rural language in England and Wales, providing a rich snapshot of the English language in these countries today using contemporary sociolinguistic sampling techniques, studying a broad cross-section of the population. Modelled on the successful Swiss Dialäktatlas, this project serves as a 21st-century counterpart to the historic Survey of English Dialects from the 1950s and 60s.
The post holder will be expected to contribute to all aspects of the project, with a focus on data management and analysis (including data mapping and visualisation). They should be familiar with a broad range of theoretical approaches across syntax, morphology, phonology and phonetics, with a specialisation in at least one of these areas. They will provide guidance to junior members of the research group, including research assistants, doctoral students, and to project participants, and will play an active role in developing the growing sociolinguistics academic community in Oxford. They will also be responsible for comparing contemporary data with historical datasets (such as the Survey of English Dialects or relevant historical corpora) and for contributing to narrative case studies of linguistic innovation and diffusion. This will involve exploring the sociolinguistic and historical factors that have shaped these developments. Like all project members, they will be expected to carry out data collection (primarily remotely) to build the CURLEW corpus.
About You
You will have a doctoral degree in either Linguistics or a relevant related field, together with relevant research experience and previous experience of contributing to publications and presentations.
The post holder must have sufficient specialist knowledge of relevant areas (such as language variation and change/sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, morphosyntax, history of the English language, geospatial linguistics and dialectology) to work with and develop the research programme, including necessary technical and statistical skills.
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