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Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences MPhil/PhD

London, Bloomsbury

UK students International students

Study mode

UK tuition fees (2024/25)

£6,035

£3,015

Overseas tuition fees (2024/25)

£25,900

£12,950

Duration

3 calendar years

5 calendar years

Programme starts

Research degrees may start at any time of the year, but typically start in September.

Applications accepted

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.

Apply for this course

Entry requirements

Normally a minimum of an upper second-class Bachelor's degree or a Master's degree in a relevant discipline from a UK university, or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard.

The English language level for this programme is: Level 2

UCL Pre-Master's and Pre-sessional English courses are for international students who are aiming to study for a postgraduate degree at UCL. The courses will develop your academic English and academic skills required to succeed at postgraduate level.

Further information can be found on our English language requirements page.

Equivalent qualifications

Country-specific information, including details of when UCL representatives are visiting your part of the world, can be obtained from the International Students website.

International applicants can find out the equivalent qualification for their country by selecting from the list below. Please note that the equivalency will correspond to the broad UK degree classification stated on this page (e.g. upper second-class). Where a specific overall percentage is required in the UK qualification, the international equivalency will be higher than that stated below. Please contact Graduate Admissions should you require further advice.

About this degree

The department combines basic research into the mechanisms of speech and hearing with applications to speech technology and hearing impairment, and takes an interdisciplinary approach to this work including Linguistics and Experimental Psychology.

Our methodologies include behavioural experimentation; neuroimaging, neurostimulation and neurophysiology; acoustic and articulatory measurement of speech production; and computational modelling and machine learning.

We test early development (infants and children) as well as normal adults and aging; normal hearing, hearing impairment, and speech in noise; first and second language learning and bilingualism; comparisons across languages and accents; and evolution of sound systems over time.

Who this course is for

If you meet the entry requirements, it is important to check whether we can supervise research in your chosen area. We only take MPhil/PhD students to whom we can offer expert research supervision from one of our academic staff. Therefore, your research question needs to engage with the research interests of one of our staff.

You can learn more about our research themes and the projects within these themes in our Research section.

Read about what it takes to become a UCL graduate research student

What this course will give you

SHaPS focuses on speech research within an interdisciplinary context, with strong links to UCL Linguistics, Language and Cognition, Experimental Psychology, the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, and UCL Ear Institute, as well as international and industrial collaborations. The department shares state-of-the-art laboratories, including facilities for adult and infant EEG, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, and eye tracking.

Find out how your research could have an impact

The foundation of your career

Recent graduates have secured academic teaching and research positions in speech, hearing science, and phonetics at UK and international universities, and at leading companies in the speech technology industry.

Employability

Our programme is distinctive in terms of the depth and variety of approaches to speech research, which gives our graduates varied employment opportunities in teaching, research, health and industry.

Networking

We have strong collaborative links with external research groups, clinicians, and industry. Students are encouraged to attend and present at departmental seminars, as well as participate in international conferences and workshops.

Teaching and learning

Students will typically audit taught modules usually in research methods and statistics at appropriate doctoral levels, depending on their training needs.

Each student has an Upgrade Viva at the midpoint of their PhD. For full-time students this is usually between 9 and 18 months after initial registration; for part-time students this is usually between 15 and 30 months after initial registration. The purpose of the Upgrade Viva is to assess the student’s progress and ability to complete their PhD programme in a reasonable time frame.
At the end of their PhD, each student has to submit a written thesis of not more than 100,000 words, followed by a viva voce examination with two examiners, one who is internal to UCL and another who is external.

A typical full-time PhD student will spend approximately 36.5 hours per week working on their PhD.

The contact time that a student spends with their supervisory team, thesis committee members and training courses vary from student to student depending on need throughout their PhD. Part-time student hours are pro-rata.

Research areas and structure

Speech perception and production from infancy through later adulthood
EEG, TMS and fMRI investigations of speech perception, production and hearing
Hearing impairment and auditory prostheses for speech communication
Speaker recognition and paralinguistics
Sociophonetic analyses of accent change and development
Second-language learning and bilingualism
Quantitative modelling of tone, intonation, and rhythm
Models of the relationship between speech articulation and acoustics
Structural and kinematic characteristics of speech production

Research environment

Speech Hearing and Phonetic Sciences is based in Chandler House. Here there are facilities for psychology and language science research including, but not limited to, eye-tracking, electroencephalography (EEG/ERP), functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), ultrasound, and transcranial electrical stimulation (TES), as well as several sound treated booths for behavioural studies and audiovisual recordings. There is a dedicated Experimental Officer to support research.

: The full-time PhD typically lasts for 3 years, including the time registered as an MPhil student, and if the thesis is not submitted within this time then students may register as Completing Research Students (CRS) for 1 additional year.
: Part-time students are normally required to be registered for 5 years, with 2 additional years as Completing Research Students (CRS) if needed.

Accessibility

Details of the accessibility of UCL buildings can be obtained from AccessAble accessable.co.uk. Further information can also be obtained from the UCL Student Support and Wellbeing team.

Fees and funding

Fees for this course

UK students International students

Fee description	Full-time	Part-time
Tuition fees (2024/25)	£6,035	£3,015
Tuition fees (2024/25)	£25,900	£12,950

The tuition fees shown are for the year indicated above. Fees for subsequent years may increase or otherwise vary. Where the programme is offered on a flexible/modular basis, fees are charged pro-rata to the appropriate full-time Master's fee taken in an academic session. Further information on fee status, fee increases and the fee schedule can be viewed on the UCL Students website: ucl.ac.uk/students/fees.

Additional costs

This programme has no additional costs.

For more information on additional costs for prospective students please go to our estimated cost of essential expenditure at Accommodation and living costs.

Funding your studies

Please contact potential supervisors and the department in the Autumn (Sept-Oct) to discuss application procedures and deadlines for all of the funding opportunities.

You are strongly advised to contact and work with your potential supervisor when completing your application for funding.

Please also see:

UCL Research Excellence Scholarships:

UCL, Bloomsbury and East London Doctoral Training Partnership

For a comprehensive list of the funding opportunities available at UCL, including funding relevant to your nationality, please visit the Scholarships and Funding website.

See all the ways you can fund your studies

Next steps

Deadlines and start dates are usually dictated by funding arrangements so check with the department as early as possible to see if you need to consider these in your application preparation. In most cases you should identify and contact potential supervisors before making your application. For more information see our How to apply page.

Please contact potential supervisors and the department in the Autumn to discuss application procedures and deadlines for all of the funding opportunities. . Applications should be made as soon as possible and not later than 30 June for September entry.

Please note that you may submit applications for a maximum of two graduate programmes (or one application for the Law LLM) in any application cycle.

This programme requires two references. Further information regarding references can be found on this Selecting your references page.

Choose your programme

Please read the Application Guidance before proceeding with your application.