Research Fellow - SignGPT

This is an exciting opportunity to work with the UCL/DCAL component of "SignGPT" - a research team led by Prof Kearsy Cormier and Prof Bencie Woll. The team works closely with other collaborators on the project - Lead PI Prof Richard Bowden (University of Surrey) and Prof Andrew Zisserman (University of Oxford) and their teams.

The postholder will provide linguistic expertise to the design of AI tools and assets and will then use these tools to conduct linguistic research. They will also help organise the user community workshops, post news items online, and contribute to writing up of the project findings along with the PI/CIs. The post holder will receive training, support and mentoring as appropriate to the role. The post-holder will be based at the UCL Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL).

• The position is offered for 36 months.
• Appointment at Grade 7 is dependent upon having been awarded a PhD; if this is not the case, initial appointment will be at Grade 6B (salary £40,603 - £43,749 per annum) with payment at Grade 7 being backdated to the date of final submission of the PhD Thesis. To be considered eligible for this post, applicants must have formally submitted their PhD thesis and must either have successfully completed their viva examination or have an agreed viva date scheduled within 3 months of the post's commencement date.
• This role meets the eligibility requirements for a skilled worker certificate of sponsorship or a global talent visa under UK Visas and Immigration legislation. Therefore, UCL welcomes applications from international applicants who require a visa.
• We will consider applications to work on a part-time basis or job-share wherever possible.
• This appointment is subject to UCL Terms and Conditions of Service for Research and Professional Services Staff. Please visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resources/conditions-service-research-teaching-and-professional-services-staff for more information.
• The UCL Ways of Working supports colleagues to be successful and happy at UCL through sharing expectations around how we work - please visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resources/policies-advice/ways-working to find out more.

You will hold a doctoral degree in linguistics or related area (e.g. applied linguistics, corpus/computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, data science) or evidence of substantial relevant research experience in one or more of these areas. You will also have fluent skills in British Sign Language (BSL) or another sign language. You will be based at UCL DCAL and will work closely with other project members at DCAL. You will also liaise regularly with researchers at Surrey and Oxford who will be doing the main technical work.

This advert will close on 26 November 2026 at 23:59 GMT. A Job Description and Person Specification can be accessed at the bottom of this page.

If you have any queries about the role, please contact Kearsy Cormier at k.cormier@ucl.ac.uk. If you need reasonable adjustments or a more accessible format to apply for this job online or have any queries about the application process, please contact PALS HR at pals.hr@ucl.ac.uk.