Research Fellow – SignGPT Full-time NEW

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. The UCL Ways of Working supports colleagues to be successful and happy at UCL through sharing expectations around how we work.

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. 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.

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents, we also offer some great benefits some of which are below:

• 41 Days holiday (27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days)
• Additional 5 days' annual leave purchase scheme
• Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE)
• Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
• Immigration loan
• Relocation scheme for certain posts
• On-Site nursery
• On-site gym
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay
• Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service
• Discounted medical insurance

Visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/reward-and-benefits to find out more.

As London's Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world's talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong. We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL's workforce. These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women. DCAL particularly encourages applications from deaf and deafblind people for all posts. Our department holds an Athena SWAN Silver award, in recognition of our commitment and demonstrable impact in advancing gender equality.