Senior Research Associate - 0783-25

Join to apply for the Senior Research Associate – 0783-25 role at Lancaster University

Linguistics and English Language

Location: Bailrigg, Lancaster, UK

Salary: £39,906 to £48,882 (Full time, indefinite with end date)

Closing Date: Monday 20 October 2025

Interview Date: Wednesday 05 November 2025

Reference: 0783-25

Job Purpose

Linguistics and English Language within the School of Social Sciences at Lancaster University is seeking to appoint a Senior Research Associate to work on a subproject of the Common European Language Indication and Analysis (CELIA) project. The EU-funded CELIA project aims to innovate, optimise and improve the language analysis procedures that EU+ migration authorities use when investigating asylum seekers’ identities and countries of origin.

In close collaboration with colleagues at the University of York, the Lancaster-led subproject specifically contributes towards the methodological development and testing of automatic and semi-automatic language indications for Arabic language variants. The subproject turns to solutions in linguistics, speech science and speech technology to feed into this strand of the CELIA project. In line with the guiding principles of the CELIA project, the specific methods in focus promote explainability, transparency and use of reliable gold-standard training data.

Key Responsibilities

• Adapt and test existing automatic accent/dialect classification technology
• Generate results and data visualisations to reflect system performance under different conditions
• Collaborate with the project team to objectively evaluate system performance
• Contribute to the development of project reports and academic outputs

The postholder will have a PhD in speech science, speech technology, linguistics, data science, computer science or related discipline. Ideally, they will have experience in working with large datasets of speech recordings or language through programming with a language like Python or similar.

The successful applicant will be in post by 1st December 2025, or as soon as possible thereafter. The post is full-time and fixed term for 24 months. The role will be based at our Bailrigg campus in Lancaster, but agile working may be possible in this role, providing the opportunity for the postholder to split their working time between on and off campus.

Lancaster University is highly ranked and research-led and situated near the historic city of Lancaster. The North West of England offers high standards of living, beautiful countryside, including the Lake District, and excellent national and international transport connectivity.

The University recognises and celebrates good employment practice undertaken to address all inequality in higher education whilst promoting the importance and wellbeing for all our colleagues.

We warmly welcome applicants from all sections of the community regardless of their age, religion, gender identity or expression, race, disability or sexual orientation, and are committed to promoting diversity, and equality of opportunity.