Aston University, Birmingham, UK: The Newbury
Studentship in the School of Languages and Social Sciences
In memory of Phill Newbury, a second year doctoral student at Aston University,
who tragically died in April of this year, the School of Languages and Social
Sciences is offering a studentship, preferably for a student who already holds
a Masters degree in a relevant subject area, to enable them to undertake
research in any of the research areas of the School Corpus Linguistics;
Critical Discourse Analysis; English Language; Forensic Linguistics; French
Linguistics, Culture, Politics or Media; German Language or Literature;
Language and the Law; Spanish Culture; International Relations; Politics and
Modern History; Sociology; Translation Studies. It is hoped that the successful
candidate will join the School on October 1st.
The total value of the studentship is some
£15,150 per annum. For a student who
has been resident in the EU for the past three years this amount will be
sufficient to cover the University fees and also to provide a maintenance
allowance of £12,000 per annum. The fees for Overseas students are currently
£8,750 per annum, so the maintenance grant for such a student would be reduced
to some £6,400 per annum.
We intend to award the scholarship to the candidate who, in our opinion has the
best thought-out research proposal. In order to allow potential candidates
sufficient time to prepare their proposals, the closing date for applications
will be mid-day on Monday August 14th and interviews will take place in the
week of September 4th . Please make sure you will be able to attend for
interview if invited.
Your research proposal should be 2-3,000 words long and should include a brief
review of the relevant literature, a statement of the research question(s), an
indication of how the question(s) will be approached and an outline of how the
first year’s work might be organised. As a guide, we would normally expect that
you spend much of the first six months familiarising yourself with the
literature and discovering and testing potential analytical tools. Please send
the proposal both electronically and in hard copy form to Ms Margarita Chu -
m.chu@aston.ac.uk.
To speed up the process, please submit an electronic PhD application form as
soon as you decide to apply for the studentship; this will enable us to check
that no necessary details are missing - the form is available from Ms Chu. Your
application for the studentship should also include a CV, the names of two
academic referees and, if you are not a native speaker, proof of competence in
English, usually in the form of a TOEFL or IELTS test score. The minimum test
scores are as follows:
TOEFL: 610 (paper-based) or 253 (computer-based) or 101/102 (Internet-based)
IELTS: 7.0 (minimum 7.0 in writing, and 6.0 in speaking, listening and reading)
Applications for the studentship should be
addressed to Ms Margarita Chu, at the
address below, to reach her at the very latest by Monday August 14th 2006. To
speed up the process please ask your referees to send their references
directly, by post or by email, to Ms Chu, m.chu@aston.ac.uk. The references
must also arrive by Monday August 14th.
If successful you will be expected to make a
teaching contribution of up to four
hrs p/w and to provide research assistance to your supervisor of up to 2 hours
p/w.
Address for correspondence: Ms Margarita Chu, School of Languages and Social
Sciences, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET. Please mark
the envelope with the phrase ‘Phill Newbury Studentship'.
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