Research Fellow - College of Arts and Law Grade 7

Job Description

Position Details

College of Arts and Law

University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £36,636 to £46,049 with potential progression once in post to £48,822

Grade: 7

Full Time, Fixed Term contract up to October 2027

Closing date: 10 th September 2026

The Department of Linguistics and Communication seeks to appoint a Research Fellow to work on the British Academy funded project ‘Language evolution and sociolinguistic variation in signing communities’ (or ‘EvoSLang’) led by Dr. Rose Stamp and Prof. Adam Schembri. EvoSLang combines sociolinguistic and language evolution approaches to understand the factors affect lexical competition; why do some variants “win” out in language evolution and others disappear out of usage?

In this project, we compare variation across three sign languages of different ages and sociolinguistic profiles:
British Sign Language (BSL), Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and Kufr Qassem Sign Language (KQSL).

The focus of this position will be to investigate the factors which affect lexical competition, including ease of perception and production, social value, iconicity, etc. Using motion capture and tracking methods, we plan to automatically measure the processes of change in sign languages. In addition, we will create a series of online perception tasks, which help us to understand how signers recognise, classify and judge different signing styles.

One of our goals is to create a gender- and ethnically-neutral avatar to serve as the stimuli for the experiment.

The research fellow will have a background in Computer Science or information Systems (or related fields), high level research skills, as well as a demonstrated ability to work independently. It is a bonus if the fellow has an interest or some experience in sign language; they should have a willingness to learn BSL.

The Department of Linguistics and Communication has an outstanding international reputation, with particular strengths in relevant areas such as corpus linguistics, quantitative sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and a growing interest in sign language research and gesture studies. As a member of the Department, the research fellow will join a lively and flourishing research community where they will enjoy opportunities for intellectual and other leadership in a collegiate and highly ambitious environment.

This is a full-time post with a duration of one year, with an anticipated start date of November 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter. We believe that signed language research may be effectively carried out by researchers from a range of backgrounds. However, in light of the under-representation of deaf scholars and professionals in academia, we are committed to creating opportunities for deaf scholars.

In addition to meeting the eligibility requirements, we therefore strongly encourage deaf individuals to apply.

Applicants must already have the right to work in the UK, as visa sponsorship is not available for this role.

• Work within specified research grants and projects and contribute to writing bids
• Operate within area of specialism
• Analyse and interpret research findings and results
• Contribute to generating funding
• Contribute to licensing or spin out deals with demonstrated commercial success (such as revenues, asset or company sales, IP generated) and/or public understanding of the discipline or similar

The responsibilities may include some but not all of the responsibilities outlined below.

• Ability to analyse and interpret data
• Disseminate research findings for publication, research seminars etc
• Supervise students on research related work and provide guidance to PhD students where appropriate to the…