PhD Studentships in Computational Linguistics, Speech Technology and Cognitive Science
The Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation (ILCC) at the University of Edinburgh invites applications for three-year PhD studentships starting in September 2025. ILCC is dedicated to the pursuit of basic and applied research on computational approaches to language, communication and cognition.
Primary research areas
Primary research areas include:
- Natural language processing and computational linguistics
- Machine Translation
- Speech technology
- Dialogue, multimodal interaction, language and vision
- Computational Cognitive Science , including language and speech, decision-making, learning and generalization
- Social Media and Computational Social Science
- Human-Computer interaction, design informatics, assistive and educational technology
- Information retrieval and visualization
Funding
Approximately 10 studentships from a variety of sources are available, covering both maintenance at the research council rate of GBP 19,237 (2024/25 rates) per year and tuition fees. Awards increase every year, typically with inflation. Studentships are available for UK, EU, and non-EU nationals.
Requirements
Applicants should have a strong undergradudate degree or equivalent in computer science, cognitive science, AI, or a related discipline.
For a list of academic staff at ILCC with research areas, and for a list of indicative PhD topics, please consult:
http://web.inf.ed.ac.uk/ilcc/people/academic-senior-research-staff
http://web.inf.ed.ac.uk/ilcc/study-with-us/possible-phd-topics-ilcc
How to apply
Details regarding the PhD programme and the application procedure can be found at:
https://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees/index.php?r=site/view&edition=2025&id=491
There are TWO DEADLINES for applications to receive full consideration:
round 1: 25th November 2024
round 2: 17th February 2025
We strongly recommend that non-UK applicants submit their applications in round 1, to maximise their chances of funding. Please direct inquiries to the PhD admissions team via the link below.
Contact the PhD admissions team
Please note that the 3-year ILCC PhD program is distinct from the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing, which offers a 4-year PhD with integrated study: https://www.responsiblenlp.org/