The advertised role is a fixed-term 12-month research-only position supporting the project ‘Accent Bias and Domestic Abuse Victimisation (ABDVic)’, funded by an ESRC New Investigator grant and led by principal investigator Dr Matthew Hunt. The ABDAVic project is an experimental sociolinguistics project aimed at uncovering possible linguistic discrimination of domestic abuse victims, with a specific focus on biases against classed and racialised accents. The project will involve two stages. Stage One will involve conducting matched guise-style experiments with members of the general population, while Stage Two will involve conducting those same experiments with trained domestic abuse support workers. The role is primarily to support design and implementation of these experiments – including creating auditory stimuli – as well as analysis and dissemination of the results. This role can be optionally completed remotely, with the occasional visit to Southampton or travel for conferences.

Applicants will be expected to be proficient in survey design and implementation, ideally with the university’s approved survey tool Qualtrics. They will also be expected to be proficient in either R or Python for statistical analysis, including data visualisation and mixed effect regression. They will also make written contributions to conference abstracts and talks, and eventual journal articles stemming from the project; at least one of these articles will feature the research assistant as lead author. While this is a sociolinguistics project, the position is open to applicants with PhDs in experimental social research more broadly, including applicants from fields like sociology, psychology and political science. Applicants with experience working in the areas of language and ethnicity and/or language and social class are preferred. Experience in phonetics and proficiency in Praat and Audacity is also desirable.

What we can offer you

As a university we aim to create an environment where everyone can thrive and are proactive in fostering a culture of inclusion, respect and equality of opportunity. We believe that we can only truly meet our objectives if we are reflective of society, so we are passionate about creating a working environment in which you are free to bring your whole self to work. With a generous holiday allowance as well as additional university closure days we are committed to supporting our staff and students and open to a flexible working approach. 

If you wish to discuss the role in more detail, please email Dr Matthew Hunt (m.c.hunt@soton.ac.uk) for more information.

Please provide your CV and cover letter as part of your application. 

Closing Date: 29 Oct 2026

Section: Education, Research & Enterprise

Salary: £41,885 Per Annum
Full Time Fixed Term for 12 months

Uncharted Maritime Worlds is a major European Research Council project investigating the development of seaborne trade, shipping and maritime networks from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It will bring together large quantities of previously fragmented archival evidence from across Europe to reconstruct patterns of maritime activity and develop new ways of analysing the people, ships, ports and trading networks that connected the early modern world.

The Research Fellow will take primary responsibility for identifying, collecting and analysing evidence from Spanish archives relating to maritime trade, shipping and overseas commerce between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. You will undertake extensive archival research in Spain, identify and transcribe early modern Spanish manuscript sources, and extract and structure historical information for incorporation into the project's integrated digital database. You will work closely with other members of the UMW team to integrate Spanish evidence with archival data collected elsewhere in Europe and contribute to the project's comparative historical research.

You will have a PhD (or equivalent) in History or a closely related discipline and research expertise in early modern Spain and/or the Spanish Atlantic, maritime or commercial history. Excellent written and spoken Spanish and English, advanced ability to read sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Spanish handwriting, and experience of conducting research in Spanish archives are essential. You will also have experience of extracting and analysing historical information from archival sources and working with historical datasets, databases, or digital humanities methods.

You will join an interdisciplinary research team of historians and digital specialists and will have opportunities to develop your own research and publications within the wider aims of the project, as well as contributing to collaborative publications, conferences, digital resources and other UMW outputs. The position will involve periods of archival research in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.

The post will be based in History in the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton.

For informal enquiries, please contact Professor Craig Lambert at c.lambert@soton.ac.uk.

Please apply by uploading your CV and a cover letter detailing how your skills and experience meet the requirements set out in the Job Description and Person Specification.

Closing Date: 12 Oct 2026

Section: Education, Research & Enterprise

Salary: £40,704 per annum
Full Time Fixed Term until 30/09/2031