Leverhulme Trust PhD studentship in Input and Uptake in Bilingualism and Language Disorders

This three-year Leverhulme Trust-funded PhD studentship (starting in September 2026) will focus on the interaction between input and uptake in primary school-aged Mandarin-speaking monolingual and heritage bilingual children with and without DLD in China and in the UK. The PhD student will be responsible for developing and administering structural priming experiments in Mandarin, as well as for recruiting and testing neurotypical children and children with DLD in the UK and in China, analysing and writing up results.

The successful PhD candidate will join a vibrant academic PhD community in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences (PPLS). Both Linguistics and Psychology, part of PPLS, were ranked 3rd for research excellence according to the latest Research Exercise Framework (REF2021). The applicant will have access to the School’s state-of-the-art research labs, recording studios, and technical support for programming and statistical analysis, as well as to a large research community of developmental linguists and psychologists.

Background

A fundamental question in child language development research concerns the relationship between linguistic input and children’s capacity to learn from that input. For input to have any impact, children need efficient uptake, i.e., the ability to efficiently process incoming linguistic information and map it into linguistic knowledge. In monolingual neurotypical children, efficient uptake reflects a child’s ability to predict upcoming words/phrases and to update their linguistic knowledge based on incorrect predictions (error-based learning). Yet, how language learning unfolds when input and/or uptake are affected, and whether uptake is driven by error-based prediction, are fundamental questions that remain untested in child language research that goes beyond monolingual neurotypical children. 

This PhD studentship is part of a four-year (2025-2029) Leverhulme Trust-funded project entitled “Input and uptake in bilingualism and language disorders”, which adopts a crosslinguistic perspective into the interaction between input and uptake in monolingual and bilingual children using structural priming. It investigates English and Mandarin monolingual and bilingual children with and without Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) in the UK and in China.

The successful PhD candidate will be part of a collaborative research team based in the UK and in China. 

Professor Vicky Chondrogianni (PI & Principal Supervisor), Professor of Bilingualism and Language Development, Linguistics and English Language, PPLS, University of Edinburgh, UK

Professor Holly Branigan (Co-I & Assistant Supervisor), Professor of Psychology of Language and Cognition, Psychology, PPLS, University of Edinburgh, UK 

Professor Lijuan Liang (Co-I & Assistant Supervisor), Professor of Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China

The successful PhD candidate will also work closely with the postdoctoral researcher on this project, Dr Jiuzhou Hao.


The successful applicant will receive a scholarship to cover tuition fees as well as a stipend at the UKRI minimum stipend rate (for 2025/2026 this is currently £20,780) for 3 years subject to satisfactory progress. 


The award is open to UK and overseas students applying to start their first year of study for an on-campus PhD in Linguistics and English Language in academic year 2026/2027.

This award cannot be held concurrently with any other fully- or partially-funded scholarships.

Applicants who have already obtained a PhD, or formal equivalent, as a result of direct research training will not be considered for this award.


Applicants must be of outstanding academic merit and research potential. Candidates must have, or expect to obtain, at least a UK 2:1 honours degree or higher at undergraduate level or the international equivalent, or an MSc/MRes in Linguistics and/or Psychology. Other factors such as financial status and/or nationality are not taken into account.

Applicants require (near) native knowledge of Mandarin and excellent grounding in Mandarin linguistics and experimental methods. 

If English is not your first language, you will require a valid English certificate equivalent to IELTS 7 overall with a minimum score of minimum score of 6.5 in each of Writing, Listening, Reading and Speaking). 

Experience with designing structural priming experiments and/or state-of the-art statistical methods using R (generalised mixed-effects models, Bayesian statistical analysis), and/or with testing children will be highly desirable.

Candidates are expected to start on 1st September 2026.


Applicants must submit an application to PPLS PG Enquiries (pplspgoffice@ed.ac.uk) by Thursday 15th January 2026. The application package must include:

  • a personal statement stating reasons for applying for this post, and relevant qualifications that render the applicant suitable for this role,
  • a two-page CV,
  • official degree certificates (diplomas) and transcripts for undergraduate degree(s) and postgraduate degree(s) if applicable,
  • official translations of the certificates and transcripts if not in English,
  • two academic references. 

To formally apply for this position, please send your application package to PPLS PG Enquiries (pplspgoffice@ed.ac.uk) citing the reference number 14291054LT in the message subject. Please ensure that you include this reference number and your surname in all file name extensions attached to your application.

Interviews for this studentship will be held in February 2026. Applicants will be informed about the outcome of their interview by early March 2026.


The Leverhulme Trust project PI and Co-Is will rank eligible applications primarily in terms of the academic quality of the applicant. The five highest ranked applicants will be invited to an interview with the project leads. Interview invitations will be sent out in late January/early February 2026. Applicants will be informed by early March 2026.


For informal enquiries about this position, please contact Professor Vicky Chondrogianni, e-mail: v.chondrogianni@ed.ac.uk


This article was published on