Psychology: Fully Funded PhD Studentship in Resolving the Bilingualism Language Change Paradox (RS919)

Funding provider: Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol and Swansea University's Postgraduate Research Office through its central funding for equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) 

Subject areas: Psychology

Project start date: October 2026 ** (Please see the note below regarding potential later start dates)

Supervisors: Professor Jeremy Tree, Dr Gwennan Higham, Dr Kyle Jones 

Aligned programme of study: PhD Psychology

Mode of study: Full-time or Part-time  

Project description:

With Wales being a bilingual society, it is common for many people to use both Welsh and English when interacting with other people. When a bilingual is communicating with another person who speaks the same languages (e.g., Welsh and English), bilinguals switch languages interchangeably, often midsentence. The fact that bilinguals voluntarily switch when communicating appears at odds with much laboratory based research suggesting that switching language comes at a cognitive cost. Which begs the question: why do bilinguals choose to keep switching language types in conversation, despite apparent information processing inefficiencies? A phenomena we have dubbed the bilingual communication “paradox”. It is clear that understanding how and why people voluntarily switch languages remains a key issue in studying the bilingual experience – and evidence suggests such switching behaviour can be influenced by many different factors. This can include cues present in the context (e.g., visual information associated with one of the languages, de Bruin & Martin, 2022; Vaughan-Evans, 2023) as well as the language behaviour of the conversation partner (Kootstra et al., 2020). Currently, such emerging evidence has not been studied in detail with Welsh-English bilinguals, despite Welsh speakers being an ideal population for investigation. It is our view that Wales and Welsh speakers constitute an untapped ‘living laboratory’ of bilingualism research, and we are keen to demonstrate this untapped potential to the wider research world relevant to this topic. 

Research questions 

As mentioned earlier, for the most part, the topics of language behaviour and language control in bilinguals have mostly been studied in artificial lab based experimental settings, for example, by asking bilinguals to name individual pictures without context and without interacting with another person. The proposed research project, therefore, aims to address two key questions by studying language choice and switching in more naturalistic bilingual contexts. First, it will examine how a bilingual’s language choice and behaviour is shaped by factors related to the bilingual themselves (such as their language preferences, age, regional location of origin and speed of lexical retrieval in each language) as well as by factors present in the context and medium of communication (such as overall language environment and behaviour of the conversation partner). Second, it will examine how bilinguals use their language control in these more naturalistic environments while using two languages (both in informal spoken and digital communication), and how their language control is influenced by the factors mentioned above. It is hoped that by understanding when and why language switching occurs for bilingual Welsh speakers, we can better inform both theories of how language processes function and feed into wider policy discussions. Moreover, we hope to continue to highlight the importance of Welsh populations to the global bilingualism research agenda. 

Methods 

One of the supervisors (Dr de Bruin) recently developed new, more interactive paradigms to study language behaviour and language control in interaction (de Bruin & Shiron, 2023). This study, testing Bulgarian-English bilinguals, showed that free language use was influenced by both the sentence context (relationship between words in a sentence) as well as the behaviour of the conversation partner (when they switched and which language they used for specific items). We wish to adopt these similar paradigms with Welsh speakers for the first time, which will allow us to measure both the bilingual’s language choice and switching, as well as the speed with which they can retrieve words. Moreover, it will determine the generalisation of this previously published work. We will aim to compare performance between different contexts (e.g., switching versus using one language) to assess language control in different types of language contexts. By manipulating different variables across a range of studies (for instance, the language behaviour of the conversation partner, or the topic of conversation), we will be able to examine how and why bilinguals use their languages and switch between them in bilingual environments.  

Overall, the proposed research will help to further develop our theoretical understanding of bilingual language production and language switching. It does this by studying these questions in more naturalistic contexts and in the important but understudied population of Welsh-English bilinguals. This will increase the inclusion of Welsh speakers in bilingualism research. Better understanding a bilingual’s communication patterns also has potential further societal consequences, including for bilingual education as well as for clinical language assessments in both children and older adults (e.g., early dementia assessment), which often only consider one language at a time and often do not consider how bilinguals use their languages in bilingual contexts.

UK fee eligible applicants only

Due to funding restrictions, this scholarship is open to applicants eligible to pay tuition fees at the UK rate only, as defined by UKCISA (Full list of categories for HE in Wales) 

PhD: Applicants for PhD must hold an undergraduate degree at 2.1 level and a master’s degree. Alternatively, applicants with a UK first class honours degree (or non-UK equivalent as defined by Swansea University) not holding a master’s degree, will be considered on an individual basis. 

English Language 
IELTS 6.5 Overall (with no individual component below 6.5) or Swansea University recognised equivalent. Full details of our English Language policy, including certificate time validity, can be found here. 

Note for international and European applicants: details of how your qualification compares to the published academic entry requirements can be found on our Country Specific Entry Requirements page. 

This scholarship is funded jointly by Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol and Swansea University's Postgraduate Research Office through its central equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) funding for three years and commences in September 2026.  

This scholarship covers the full cost of tuition fees and an annual stipend at UKRI rate (currently £20,780 for 2025/26).  

Additional research expenses of up to £500 per year will also be available.

To apply, please complete the entire application form, following this link: Complete your application here in Learner Gateway.

In order to be considered for this scholarship award the following steps are also required. 

1) In section ‘Programme Related Information’ please input the relevant RS Code for the scholarship award i.e. RS919

2) In section ‘Research’ you will see ‘Proposed project title/studentship title’* (Mandatory) 

• In ‘Proposed project title/studentship title’ please input:  
  • the RS Code, RS919 and 
  • the scholarship title.   
• Please leave Proposed Supervisor field blank 
• Please leave Research Project (if applicable) blank 
• In ‘Do you have a proposal to upload?*’(Mandatory) please select Yes 
• Then upload copy of advert (you can save the advert by clicking print, and then print to PDF) 

3) In section ‘Funding information’ please choose the option ‘Scholarship Funding’ only. Please ensure no other options are selected. 

*It is the responsibility of the applicant to list the above information accurately when applying, please note that applications received without the above information listed will not be considered for the scholarship award. 

If you’ve previously applied for this programme, the system will display an “Application Submitted” warning and block a new submission. In this case: 

1. Apply for the same course with the next available start date (e.g., select January if October is unavailable). 
2. Email pgrscholarships@swansea.ac.uk with your student number and the relevant scholarship RS code, requesting the start date be amended to match the advert. 
3. Admissions staff will then update your application accordingly. 

One application is required per individual Swansea University led research scholarship award; applications cannot be considered listing multiple Swansea University led research scholarship awards. 

NOTE: Applicants for PhD/EngD/ProfD/EdD - to support our commitment to providing an environment free of discrimination and celebrating diversity at Swansea University you are required to complete an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Monitoring Form in addition to your programme application form.    

Please note that completion of the EDI Monitoring Form is mandatory; your application may not progress if this information is not submitted. 

As part of your online application, you MUST upload the following documents (please do not send these via email): 

• CV 

• Degree certificates and transcripts (if you are currently studying for a degree, screenshots of your grades to date are sufficient) 

• A cover letter including a ‘Supplementary Personal Statement’ to explain why the position particularly matches your skills and experience and how you choose to develop the project. 

• One reference (academic or previous employer) on headed paper or using the Swansea University reference form. Please note that we are not able to accept references received citing private email accounts, e.g. Hotmail. Referees should cite their employment email address for verification of reference. 

• Evidence of meeting English Language requirement (if applicable). 

• Copy of UK resident visa (if applicable) 

• Confirmation of EDI form submission 

Informal enquiries are welcome; please contact  Professor Jeremy Tree, j.tree@Swansea.ac.uk  

*External Partner Application Data Sharing – Please note that as part of the scholarship application selection process, application data sharing may occur with external partners outside of the University, when joint/co-funding of a scholarship project is applicable. 

** In exceptional circumstances, and subject to the discretion of the University and/or the relevant funding body, a deferral of offer may be granted to the next available enrolment period. Such deferral will typically not exceed a duration of three calendar months from the originally stipulated commencement date. Please note that only one deferral may be considered, and any such deferral is not guaranteed.