PhD Studentship - Modelling Dialogue Understandability in Media Using Listener Types and AI

Overview

This fully funded PhD studentship at the University of Salford, supported by DTS (Xperi), investigates why dialogue in film, television and streaming media can be hard to understand even when it is audible. The project moves beyond traditional speech intelligibility measures to focus on dialogue understandability, meaning how well listeners follow the narrative without excessive effort.

The aim is a listener-aware framework that predicts dialogue understanding across audiences, devices and listening environments, producing a quantitative Dialogue Understandability Rating that reflects real viewing better than existing audio quality metrics. Objectives include defining and measuring understandability, modelling listener types such as hearing profiles, language proficiency and accent familiarity, exploring how AI, speech models and large language models can predict comprehension and listening effort, and building validated models and evaluation protocols. The research combines speech and audio analysis with AI techniques, using existing datasets and newly collected listener data, and examines the effect of listening context, device, room acoustics and cognitive effort. Expected outcomes include a validated computational model, new datasets and protocols, and insights for streaming, broadcast, accessibility and media production.

Who can apply

Applicants should have a background in machine learning, audio engineering, speech processing or a related discipline, with an interest in human-centred media technologies. The studentship is only available to students with Home fee status in the UK, and the candidate must be able to register by January 2027.

What you get

The studentship includes a fee waiver, a stipend of 22,852 pounds per year for three and a half years, all bench fees and consumable costs, and funds for conference travel.

How to apply

Applicants send a CV and a supporting statement explaining their interest, and the successful candidate must also complete the university's standard application process for research study.

Key dates

The deadline for student admissions is Monday 16 November 2026 for a January 2027 intake, and interviews are on 21 October 2026.