The IPA is pleased to announce the second edition of the IPA PhD Thesis award.
The IPA PhD Thesis award distinguishes the best PhD Thesis in the broad area of Phonetics, Speech Sciences, and Laboratory Phonology. This prize will be awarded to a PhD student with substantial academic potential, who has produced an outstanding PhD thesis that contributes to advancing the scientific study of the field.

Eligibility and Requirements:

• The candidate must have obtained their PhD in 2024;
• The candidate must be an IPA member;
• The PhD thesis must be written in or translated into English;
• The PhD thesis must be original work.

The applications will be assessed by the IPA PhD Thesis Award Committee: Taehong Cho, Lisa Davidson, Sónia Frota (Co-chair), Martine Grice (Co-Chair), Thais Christofaro Silva, Maria Josep Sole.

The applications will be assessed by the IPA PhD Thesis Award Committee.

Required Application Documents:

• An executive summary of the PhD thesis in English of 2000 words (maximum);
• A letter from the PhD supervisor recommending the candidate for consideration for this award;
• A motivation letter from the candidate outlining what makes the thesis worthy of recognition (maximum 1 page);
• The candidate’s CV, including a list of publications related to the thesis (this can include papers submitted and papers in press);
• An electronic copy of the PhD thesis;
• A scanned copy of the PhD diploma or certificate.

How to apply:

• Fill in the webform at https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/content/phd-thesis-awar... (this requires logging in as an IPA member)
  

Selection Criteria:

• Originality and impact of the research;
• Quality of CV and publications;
• Strength of the motivation letter;
• Anticipated academic potential.

The Prizes:

• Certificate;
• Free IPA membership for 3 years;
• One conference travel award of up to 300 EUR;
• Offer to publish one paper free of charge in JIPA after peer review (in case the candidate is not affiliated to an institution covered by the CUP’s transformative agreements).

Application deadline: 15 September, 2025.
The winner will be announced on the IPA website and social media by the end of December, 2025.

We thank all applicants in advance for their submissions and wish you an insightful academic summer and fall period,

The IPA PhD Thesis award Committee

The following student members have received IPA Student Mobility funding for 2025 :

• Cristina Crison Chávez (Universitat Roviraa i Virgili)
• Ming Liu (The University of Hong Kong)
• Teerawee Sukanchanon (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand)

Congratulations to the awardees!

Committee on Conference Sponsorships and Student Awards: Patrice Beddor, Ioana Chitoran (chair), John Esling, Jonathan Harrington, Katerina Nicolaidis, Masaki Taniguchi

Four student members have received IPA Student Awards for their participation at TAI 2025, the 3rd International Conference on Tone and Intonation, 16-18 May, 2025, in Herrsching, Germany. They are:

• Maria Lialiou (University of Cologne, Germany)
• Teerawee Sukanchanon (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand)
• Zhou Wangqian (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
• Fengyue Zhao (Cornell University, USA)

Congratulations to the awardees!

Committee on Conference Sponsorships and Student Awards: Patrice Beddor, Ioana Chitoran (chair), John Esling, Jonathan Harrington, Katerina Nicolaidis, Masaki Taniguchi

The IPA is co-sponsoring TAI 2025, to be held in Herrsching, Germany, 16-18 May 2025. IPA is offering up to four student awards for 250 € each. Applicants for these Awards must be:

• Sole author, or first and presenting author of an oral or poster presentation accepted by TAI 2025, and
• An eligible student member of the IPA: student member, unemployed member, member under age 35, member from a low-income-level country.

Applications for IPA membership can be lodged via our website here. They need to be submitted at least a week before the deadline for applications for IPA Awards. A full list of member benefits can be found on this page. To apply for an Award, eligible members of the IPA should log in to the website with their membership details and fill in the application form here. Students should upload their submitted abstract and notification of acceptance. The deadline for applications is *March 5, 2025*. The 250 € registration fee will be reimbursed after the completion of the event and upon receipt of confirmation of participation at the conference. This should include a photograph that can be posted on the IPA social media.

We are deeply saddened to inform you of the death of Ian Maddieson. Ian passed away on 2 February 2025 already. His influential work on the typology of sounds, notably the UCLA Phonological Inventory of Languages (UPSID), has significantly advanced our understanding of linguistic diversity. A respected field researcher and theorist, Maddieson contributed significantly to our knowledge of language universals and phonological theory.

His services to the International Phonetic Association were highly valued and will never be forgotten. Ian was a lifetime IPA member, the vice president of the IPA 2003-2007, and served on both the IPA Council and the Executive Council for more than 30 years in total (1989-2019), and chaired IPA's Phonetic Documentation of Languages Committee 2017-2019. Last but not least he steered the fortunes of the IPA also in his role as the editor-in-chief of JIPA from 1989 to 1995. He leaves behind a rich scholarly legacy.

We will miss him very much!

If you would like to know more about his vita, you will find more information here:
https://lx.berkeley.edu/news/passing-ian-maddieson
https://www.unm.edu/~ianm/

The IPA Executive Council
Katerina Nicolaidis (President),
Sónia Frota,
Oliver Niebuhr,
Marija Tabain,
Ghada Khattab.