In 2025, the IPA PhD Thesis Award Committee reviewed an exceptionally strong pool of submissions, with dissertations of very high scientific quality. After careful evaluation and discussion the committee decided to confer the award ex aequo, recognizing two outstanding theses whose scholarly excellence, originality, and contribution to the field of phonetics stood out in a particularly compelling way.

The awardees were Dr. Maria Lialiou, with the dissertation “Prosody and attention orienting: The role of rising intonation in speech processing”, and Dr. Anna Persson, with the dissertation “Comparing theories of pre-linguistic normalization for vowel perception”. These theses impressed the reviewers by their high scientific rigor,
conceptual clarity, and substantial contribution to phonetic research.

Maria Lialiou is a researcher at the University of Cologne. Integrating neurophysiological and behavioral methods such as EEG, pupillometry, reaction time and memory tasks, alongside analyses of speech production data, she investigates how intonational cues guide listener attention and interact with pragmatic context to shape communication.

Anna Persson is a senior lecturer in Bilingualism at the Centre for Research on Bilingualism at the Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism of Stockholm University. In her research, she investigates underlying cognitive mechanisms that enable stable speech perception across talkers, using a combination of acoustic analysis, perception experiments and computational models.

We warmly congratulate the winners and all the other applicants for the high standards achieved.

Dear IPA members and ICPhS friends!

The International Phonetic Association is pleased to announce that the Proceedings of the 19th and 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2019, Melbourne, and ICPhS 2023, Prague) have been accepted for indexing in the Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI) of Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The inclusion of our ICPhS proceedings in CPCI significantly enhances their international visibility, accessibility, and citability. It ensures that contributions are systematically indexed and traceable within one of the world’s most widely used research databases, thereby strengthening the impact and recognition of work presented at the congress.

The indexing applies retrospectively to the 2019 and 2023 proceedings, and it provides a strong basis for the inclusion of future ICPhS proceedings, including those of the upcoming ICPhS 2027 in Victoria, Canada, subject to the usual evaluation processes.

The IPA warmly thanks all colleagues involved in the preparation, review, and publication of the ICPhS proceedings. We invite our members and the wider phonetic community to join us in celebrating this important milestone.

Seven student members and one young researcher have received IPA Student Awards for their
participation at Speech Prosody 2026, 26 – 29 May, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

They are:

• Jessica Campbell (University of Southern California, USA)
• Jingyuan Gu (Fudan University, China)
• Jueyu Hou (Leiden University, The Netherlands)
• Man Yan Priscilla Lam (Leiden University, The Netherlands)
• Ka Chun Lee (Boston University, USA)
• Janne Lorenzen (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany)
• Rebekah Stanhope (Northwestern University, USA)
• Ziyan Zou (University of Alberta, Canada)

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 invites applications for a new student mobility programme. Awards will be funded for up to 1500€ each; the number of awards will depend on the budget.

The programme will support physical mobility of IPA student members to visit research laboratories with expertise in their area of study. It subsidizes travel or accommodation costs for a minimum two-week mobility to the host institution. It is primarily addressed to student members from countries where funding resources are limited. The primary goal is to provide the opportunity to students to visit a research laboratory abroad in order to conduct a specific, well-defined project (which may be a pilot project). The program will benefit students by allowing them to meet other researchers and build academic networks, acquiring knowledge and skills on the use of new experimental techniques and data analysis methods, presenting their own work to a broader audience, exchanging knowledge and ideas on common research areas. It will also promote future collaborations across different laboratories and countries.

The deadline for applications is May 31, 2026.
The mobility should be completed by March 15, 2027.

Eligibility
Current graduate student members of the Association are eligible to apply for the student mobility program. Priority will be given to students from countries where funding resources are limited.

The candidates should submit:

• A two-page CV
• A one-page summary of their research project
• A one-page motivation letter including justification for the visit, the expected learning outcomes and how the mobility will add value to their research
• A preliminary breakdown of the costs, including information on whether other funding applications were submitted and amount applied for

These four documents should be submitted as a single pdf file.

• A letter of support (pdf) by the supervisor setting out the objectives of the mobility and how it will benefit the candidate
• A letter of acceptance (pdf) by the host institution with the proposed dates of the visit (minimum 2 weeks).

Applications for IPA membership can be lodged via our website here. A full list of member benefits can be found on the same page. To apply for an Award, eligible members of the IPA should log in to the website with their membership details, fill in the application form and upload all documents to the application form here.

Upon completion of the visit, students are asked to submit:

• A short report describing the visit, the research carried out, and benefits of the programme, to be posted on the IPA website. The report may (but need not) include photos or a short video appropriate for posting on the IPA social media platform.
• A letter from the host (pdf) confirming that the mobility has taken place

The IPA is co-sponsoring Speech Prosody 2026, to be held in Philadelphia, PA, USA, 26 – 29 May 2026. The IPA is offering up to six Awards covering the student early-bird registration fees. Applicants for these Awards must be:

• Sole author, or first and presenting author of an accepted oral or poster
  presentation, 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 30, 2026. The 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.