Linguist joins Essex on short stay placement to develop research on language and sound patterns

Fernanda Barrientos Contreras, an Academic Collaborator at the University of Konstanz, Germany has been chosen to take part in the YERUN Research Mobility Awards (YRMA).

Fernanda was selected out of a total of 88 applicants to take part in the YERUN Research Mobility Awards (YRMA), which allows academics from international institutions to work together on research projects and share ideas.

Fernanda's research area is linguistics and phonology, the study of sound patterns and their relationship with meaning in language.

After obtaining a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Manchester, Fernanda was looking for an opportunity to explore phonological acquisition, the development of language sounds, a topic she discussed in her dissertation.

She hoped by applying to the YRMA scheme she could reach out to researchers that work in the area and would be interested in exploring it further.

She said: “It is a great honour to be chosen. I assumed that the competition would be fierce and I was indeed very happy to hear that my application had been successful.”

At Essex, Fernanda will join the Centre for Research in Language Development throughout the Lifespan (LaDeLi) as part of the Department of Language and Linguistics.

During her three-week stay she will develop her theory on phonological acquisition in a second language and hopes to co-author an article on the topic with Dr Yuni Kim. She will also give a workshop in experimental approaches to the study of speech perception.

She said: “I particularly look forward to meeting the LaDeLi research group and the PhD students who are also doing research in the topic. And of course, I am hoping that my workshop could be of use to other researchers.”

The call for the YERUN Research Mobility Awards opens every October. If you are interested in applying, please visit the YERUN website.