Dr Sam Kirkham

Research Overview

I am interested in the interdisciplinary study of speech, sound and language. My research focuses on how people produce the sounds of speech, including vocal tract movements, acoustic characteristics, and variation between languages and dialects. I do fieldwork and laboratory research to address descriptive and theoretical questions in these areas, using methods such as acoustic analysis, vocal tract imaging (ultrasound, electromagnetic articulography) and statistical modelling. Most of my current research is on various topics in articulatory sociophonetics, such as:

• Targets and dynamics in speech (with Patrycja Strycharczuk, Manchester; AHRC-funded 2019-22)
• Dialect variation in acoustic-articulatory dynamics (with Emily Gorman, Lancaster)
• Articulatory dynamics of palatalisation contrasts in Scottish Gaelic (with Claire Nance, Lancaster)
• Acoustics, articulation and perception of mergers in Australian English (with Chloé Diskin; Rosey Billington; Debbie Loakes, Melbourne; Hywel Stoakes, Auckland; Simon Gonzalez, ANU)
• Articulation of Danish 'soft d' (with Andrea Brink Siem, Aarhus)

I also work on other topics in phonetics and sociophonetics, including liquid consonants, phonetics of contact varieties, and dialect variation. Some ongoing projects include:

• Acquisition of liquids by Sylheti-English bilingual children (with Kathleen McCarthy, QMUL)
• Crowdsourcing regional phonetic variation across England (with Adrian Leemann, Bern; George Brown, Lancaster; David Britain, Bern; Tam Blaxter, Cambridge; Eleanor Walker, Lancaster)
• Phonetic and phonologial variation in North West England (with Claire Nance, Lancaster)

Current Teaching

I teach on the following courses:

• LING102 English Language
• LING223 English Phonetics
• LING327 Advanced English Phonetics
• LING416 Experimental Phonetics

In 2016 I was awarded Lancaster University's Undergraduate Teaching Award, which is a university-wide prize based on student nominations and testimonials. I have also been nominated for Best Dissertation Supervisor and Best Student Advisor awards at Lancaster, as well as Postgraduate Tutor of the Year when I was a PhD student at Sheffield.

PhD Supervision Interests

I am interested in supervising students who wish to carry out research in the following areas: phonetics, sociophonetics, articulatory phonetics, speech production, dialect variation, phonetic fieldwork, sound change, langauge variation and change. I particularly welcome projects that make use of our lab's specialist instrumentation, which includes electromagnetic articulography (EMA), high-speed ultrasound, electropalatography (EPG), electroglottography (EGG), and aerodynamics systems.

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