Marie Curie PhD position on- HUM.AI.N-ACCENT

Marie Curie PhD position available at UCD on HUM.AI.N-ACCENT MSCA Doctoral Network

A Marie Curie PhD position is available at the HCI@UCD group in the UCD School of Information & Communication Studies, under the supervision of (opens in a new window)Prof. Benjamin Cowan in collaboration with (opens in a new window)Dr Madeleine Steeds. The PhD project aims to investigate how the use of foreign accented speech by conversational AI agents can be used as a way to influence user partner models, how this impacts language production during human-conversational AI dialogues.

The Doctoral Candidate (DC) will be part of an international network of 13 research labs located throughout Europe who work on the EU funded HUM.AI.N-ACCENT project. The full consortium has a total of 24 academic and non-academic partners in Europe, Canada and the USA. As part of the training, the DC will attend regular events across Europe and will take short stays (secondments) to at least two Beneficiary/Partner Organizations.

As a student, you would be enrolled in the 4 year Information & Communication Studies PhD programme at University College Dublin, Ireland. The position offers a work contract for 3 years with an additional funded year. The position includes a gross baseline annual salary of up to €49,396 + approx. €7,000 p.a. mobility allowance (for 3 years) and approx. €5000 p.a. family allowance (if applicable for 3 years). The position covers academic fees and includes funding for research training and travel.

About the Project:

HUM.AI.N-ACCENT is an interdisciplinary research project that explores the neurocognitive and social impacts of foreign-accented speech in human-human and human-AI interactions. With millions of new arrivals to the European Union each year, there is an urgent need to understand how foreign accents influence communication, decision-making, and social dynamics. Research has shown that foreign-accented speech can generate biases and increase cognitive load, yet the origins and consequences of these effects are still poorly understood. The HUM.AI.N-ACCENT project aims to fill this gap by combining insights from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, AI engineering, human-computer interaction, and social science, with lifespan perspectives. Using advanced methodologies like neuroimaging, eye-tracking, virtual reality, and neural tracking, the project will investigate how foreign-accented speech affects neural responses, attention allocation, and social judgments. By studying both human-human and human-AI interactions, the project will provide critical insights into how accents shape communication and behaviour in diverse contexts.
Further information about the project: (opens in a new window)https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101226709

Job description:

The successful candidate will receive interdisciplinary training in theories and methods for the study of psycholinguistics, more specifically, native- and foreign-accented speech processing. This includes many network-wide events and other (international) training opportunities.

Research Environment:

University College Dublin is one of Europe's leading research-intensive universities and is ranked within the top 1% of higher education institutions world-wide. The UCD School of Information & Communication Studies is also an internationally leading information school, part of the iSchool initiative and is ranked in the Top 100 in the world by (opens in a new window)QS Rankings.

The successful candidate will join the HCI @UCD group, a highly inter-disciplinary research group, specializing in researching how AI technologies impact and are impacted by users (https://hci.ucd.ie/). The HCI@UCD group, is one of the largest and leading HCI labs in Ireland. We are a friendly, collaborative and highly research active group, publishing regularly in leading HCI research venues (e.g. CHI, Mobile HCI, HCI Journal, TOCHI, IJHCS, ACM CUI, DIS, JMIR). Members of the group are heavily involved in major internationally leading Research Centres (RI ADAPT-(opens in a new window)https://www.adaptcentre.ie/, RI Insight-(opens in a new window)https://www.insight-centre.org/; RI D-REAL-(opens in a new window)https://d-real.ie/) with access to major national and international academic and industry networks and infrastructure.

The group’s faculty within UCD School of Information and Communication Studies (ICS) focus on a number of areas of research including Cognition and Conversational AI (Prof. Benjamin Cowan- ICS); Ethics, Communication and Design ((opens in a new window)Assoc. Prof Marguerite Barry- ICS); Human-Centred Health (incl. Mental Health) Technology Design ((opens in a new window)Assist. Prof. Kevin Doherty- ICS); Misinformation and Disinformation ((opens in a new window)Assist. Prof. Brendan Spillane- ICS); Cognitive and Social Psychological Processes in HCI (Assist. Prof. (opens in a new window)Madeleine Steeds- ICS).

UCD Supervisors/Collaborators:

(opens in a new window)Prof. Benjamin Cowan is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Conversational Informatics at UCD’s School of Information & Communication Studies.  He is the co-founder and co-director of HCI@UCD group ((opens in a new window)https://hci.ucd.ie/), leading research on Cognition and Conversational AI. His work is highly interdisciplinary, fusing psychology, human-computer interaction and conversational AI to investigate how people interact with collaborative conversational interfaces. His recent research has focuses specifically on how theory and quantitative methods from psychological science can be applied to understand and design collaborative conversational AI experiences. He is co-founder of the ACM Conversational User Interfaces conference and is a Co-PI on the Research Ireland ADAPT Centre, which focuses on conducting human-centered AI research.

(opens in a new window)Dr Madeleine Steeds is Assistant Professor within the School of Information & Communication Studies at UCD. Their research is centred around technology augmented cognition and conversation. Madeleine's research interests lie at the intersection of human-computer interaction and cognitive and social psychology. They are particularly interested in how stereotypes held about devices and people may influence interaction, and in these cases, how the potential harm may be mitigated. They are also particularly interested in the effects of technology on human memory, and how interacting with technology may help or harm these processes. Dr Steeds is Deputy Director of the MSc in Human-Computer Interaction and is Subcommittee Chair for the Understanding People- Statistical and Quantitative Methods Subcommittee at ACM CHI 2026.

Where to apply:

E-mail (opens in a new window)benjamin.cowan@ucd.ie with:

• An up to date and complete CV
• Cover Letter
• Statement of Research Interests (1 page max)

Deadline for applications is 19^th November 2025

Interviews for shortlisted candidates will then take place in November/December with a planned starting date in January 2026 or as close to this date as possible.

Requirements:

Skills/Qualifications:
The candidate should have a Master’s degree (or equivalent) in Psychology, Cognitive Science, Psycholinguistic, Human-Computer Interaction or related fields. Previous experience with experimental psychology and/or quantitative research methods is required, as well as good knowledge of psychology of language, conversational user interface and conversational AI research. The candidate should have strong background in experiment programming and statistical analyses and excellent English written and oral communication skills.

Potential candidates must also comply with the Marie Curie Actions mobility rule: 

• The researcher must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the country of the beneficiary (in this case: Ireland) for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately before their appointment.
• The researcher cannot already be in possession of a doctoral degree.

Specific Requirements:

• Previous experience in participating in research projects (e.g., data collection, analysis).
• Methodological and technical skills: experimental paradigms in the psychology of language, human-computer interaction and conversational AI, experiment-based programming and statistical analysis skills
• Interest in the psychology of language, conversational user interface, conversational and collaborative AI
• Strong scientific writing skills and high attention to detail.

As part of the Marie Curie Doctoral Network, other PhD positions are also available at:

Nebrija University, Spain
(opens in a new window)https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/372608

Basque Center on Cognition, Brain & Language, Spain
(opens in a new window)https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/368766  and (opens in a new window)https://www.bcbl.eu/en/join-us/job-offers/funded-phd-candidate-position-accented-speech-processing

University of Barcelona, Spain
Please, check the university job vacancies in the following days for further information: (opens in a new window)https://www.neurociencies.ub.edu/job-offers/

Open University of Catalonia, Spain
Please, check the university job vacancies in the following days for further information: (opens in a new window)https://www.uoc.edu/portal/en/uneix-equip/ofertes/index.html

Bangor University, UK
(opens in a new window)https://www.bangor.ac.uk/studentfinance/postgraduate/funding#psychology

Radboud University, Netherlands
(opens in a new window)https://www.ru.nl/en/working-at/job-opportunities/phd-position-accented-speech-processing

University of Padova, Italy (2 positions)
(opens in a new window)https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/373324

University of Oslo, Norway
(opens in a new window)https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/374275

University of Lille, France
(opens in a new window)https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/373010

Free University of Brussels, Belgium
(opens in a new window)https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/370780

University of Bern, Switzerland (funded by the SERI) (opens in a new window)https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/372867 and
(opens in a new window)https://ohws.prospective.ch/public/v1/jobs/77c6f78a-ac01-4c09-9908-66b17fbc18ce