News

The new, interdisciplinary Cambridge Festival will take place from 26 March to 4 April 2021, with more than 350 free online events and activities: from panel discussions, film premieres, and self-guided walking tours, to ‘try this at home’ activities for the whole family. The following is a selection of language sciences related talks from the prog…

The Cambridge Language Sciences Annual Symposium is an annual meeting of minds, bringing together language scientists of all disciplines from the University of Cambridge and beyond. The 2020 event took place on 17 November and was attended by 200 colleagues from across the University of Cambridge and other leading research institutions working in t…

Following the success of Dr Kirsty McDougall and her team in securing funding for their research on ‘Improving Voice Identification Procedures’ (IVIP), a new PhD studentship in forensic phonetics has now been established to work in this area.The studentship is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge Phonetics Laboratory, Oxford Wave Res…

We are delighted to announce that Dr Guy Emerson has taken on a formal role as Executive Director for Cambridge Language Sciences working alongside the Co-Directors Prof. Ann Copestake and Prof. Brechtje Post.Dr Emerson takes on this position as part of his Departmental Early Career Academic Fellowship in the Dept. of Computer Science & Technology.…

Cambridge Language Sciences Interdisciplinary Research Centre has concluded a new inter-institutional agreement of cooperation with the Chuo University Institute of Cultural Sciences.The aim of the agreement is to further facilitate research exchange and collaboration across countries and disciplines through activities such as joint research and ac…

A new research centre focused on improving support for lifelong learning and cognitive agility opened on 1 October 2020 in Singapore.The Centre for Lifelong Learning and Individualised Cognition (CLIC) is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), and is funded by Singapo…

For geographers, maps are everyday tools. I’m a historical linguist, and to me a map is a selection of locals’ speech presented in a visual manner. Here’s how I developed an appreciation for the zoomable maps available on the National Library of Scotland’s website and the University of Edinburgh’s Edina Digimap facility, and the Ordnance Survey Nam…

Newly-arrived pupils who speak English as an additional language (EAL) often make ‘mixed’ linguistic and academic progress during their first years in British schools, which need a proper framework to give them sustained support, a study suggests.At the moment, it is often left to individual teachers or schools to decide how to handle the challenge…

A review funded by the Cambridge Language Sciences Incubator Fund and recently published in the International Journal of Bilingualism, highlights the positive link between bilingualism and children’s well-being.The review on Bilingualism in the Family and Child Well-being is part of an ongoing collaboration between Dr Napoleon Katsos (Theoretical a…

Congratulations to the following Cambridge Language Sciences members on their recently announced academic promotions, which will take effect from 1 October 2020ProfessorshipsNigel Collier, Professor of Natural Language ProcessingHenriëtte Hendriks, Professor of Language Acquisition & CognitionBrechtje Post, Professor of Phonetics & PhonologyUnivers…

Do you have any interactive online resources that you have developed, or that you would recommend to other researchers in the language sciences? If so, please let us know.Cambridge Language Sciences are compiling an inventory of interactive online tools and resources related to language sciences research or for use by researchers in the language sc…

Jacqueline Rowe, a recent graduate in linguistics from Cambridge, reflects on the complexity of post-colonial language policy based on her fieldwork in Guinea-Bissau.Jacqueline Rowe graduated from the Section of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics in 2019. Her dissertation project, supervised by Dr Henriette Hendriks, considered the role of Portugu…

This year the June Symposium for Early-Career Researchers moved online for the first time.The event, now in its third year, celebrates work by early-career researchers working in the field of language sciences and is open to all researchers at the University of Cambridge.The live plenary and poster sessions took place on 18 June via video conferenc…

A team from Professor Mark Gales' Speech Research Group and the ALTA Institute recently took part in the INTERSPEECH 2020 Shared Task on Automatic Speech Recognition for Non-Native Children's Speech.There are limited resources available of children's speech data and even less of non-native speakers. Children's speech differs from that of adults due…

Mélanie Gréaux is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Education. She is co-supervised by Dr Jenny Gibson and Dr Napoleon Katsos, and funded by the ESRC-DTP Cambridge in partnership with Autistica. Her doctoral research is looking at the potential of collaborative and cross-cultural professional learning opportunities to foster inclusive healthcare se…