IPA News

12 Jan 2025

On January 10, 2025, the IPA Secretary, Oliver Niebuhr, visited the Phonetics Institutes within the Dept. of Linguistics at the University of Cologne (Germany). We are very pleased that we were able to personally present our first winner of the IPA Thesis Award, Simona Sbranna, with her certificate during this meeting. Simona received the award for an impressive thesis on "Developing linguistic competence in second language learning: Fluency and prosody in Italian learners of German."

The photo shows from left to right the IPA Secretary Oliver Niebuhr, the award winner Simona Sbranna (now a postdoc researcher at the Cologne Phonetics Institute), and the director of the Phonetics Lab, Martine Grice.

We are very much looking forward to the new insightful submissions for the 2025 round of the award. The deadline for submitting the PhD thesis and the associated documents will again be in late summer 2025. We will announce it in good time.

19 Dec 2024

The IPA PhD Thesis Award Committee is happy to announce the winner of the IPA Thesis Award 2024: Simona Sbranna, from the University of Cologne, with a thesis titled 'Developing linguistic competence in second language learning: Fluency and prosody in Italian learners of German’.

The applications submitted for the first edition of the IPA PhD Thesis Award were of very high quality, and thus the task of the committee was extremely difficult. We congratulate the winner and all the other applicants for the high standards achieved.

5 Nov 2024

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 February 15th, 2025.
The mobility should be completed by December 15, 2025.

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. In addition, they should also submit:

  • 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 send photographs and a short video describing the visit, the research carried out, and benefits of the programme. This material will be posted on the IPA social media.

26 Aug 2024

Two student members have received IPA Student Awards for their participation at ISAPh 2024, the 5th International Symposium on Applied Phonetics, 30 Sept. - 2 October, in Tartu, Estonia. They are:

  • Yixuan Huang (Waseda University, Japan)
  • Lingyun Gao (Radboud University, the Netherlands)

Congratulations to the awardees!

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

28 May 2024

The IPA is pleased to announce the first 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 who has produced an outstanding PhD thesis with substantial academic potential and that contributes to advancing the scientific study of the field.

IPA student members who were awarded their doctorate in 2023 are eligible to apply.
Although the student can have been enrolled in a PhD programme anywhere in the world, the thesis needs to be in English.

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

Eligibility and Requirements:

  • The candidate must have obtained their PhD in 2023;
  • 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.

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 (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:

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: 30 August, 2024.
The winner will be announced on the IPA website and social media by the end of December, 2024.

IPA PhD Thesis award Committee
Taehong Cho, Lisa Davidson, Sónia Frota (Co-chair), Martine Grice (Co-Chair), Thais Christofaro Silva, Maria Josep Sole

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