Macquarie University International PhD Positions in Multicultural Australian English 2023

Macquarie University is offering an MRes Year 2 + Ph.D. bundle or Ph.D. scholarship in Phonetics/Speech Science through the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship project “Multicultural Australian English: The new voice of Sydney” awarded to Prof Felicity Cox (2019-2022). This project examines the relationship between speech production and ethnic diversity in multicultural Sydney. The aim is to generate an integrated and inclusive model of Australian English, through phonetic analysis of speech used by adolescents from a range of language backgrounds. Outcomes are expected to inform sociophonetic theories of variation, ethnicity, and identity, and provide a crucial framework for supporting sociocultural cohesion.

Eligibility criteria :

• Applicants from all nationalities are eligible.
• Applicants must undertake a direct-entry Ph.D. or MRes Year 2 (1 year) + Ph.D. (3 years) program.

The suitable applicant should have a disciplinary background in phonetics or sociophonetics. The specific topic of the candidate's research project is negotiable. Potential projects may include:

• acoustic and/or articulatory examination of select phonetic features of Australian English used by speakers from a range of heritage language backgrounds such as Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, German, Vietnamese, English
• analysis of the relationship between speech production and the level and type of speaker engagement with the local community
• ethnopoetics analysis of social microcultures within a school setting
• examination of sound change through a comparison between select acoustic data from the Multicultural Australian English project and archival Australian English data
• examination of sound change through agent-based modeling

Value :

Successful applicants will receive the following benefits-

• Tuition Fee Offset 
• A Living Allowance Stipend- value and tenure of the scholarship is an “MQRES” full-time stipend rate of $28,597 per annum (in 2023 tax-exempt for up to 4 years - indexed annually).

Deadline :

The last date to apply for the Macquarie University International PhD Positions in Multicultural Australian English 2021 is 1st July 2023 at 11 pm AEST.