Curating a collection of legacy phonetics equipment: Semester 2 and summer 2016/2017

The department owns various pieces of equipment that were once used for instrumental phonetic analysis. Some are on the shelves in the phonetics lab; others are in a store room gathering dust. Given the history of the department, it is likely that many were bought and used in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, although we know that the history of phonetics at Leeds goes back to the 1940s, and some instrumental analysis was carried out then. In those days, functions that today can be done with a piece of software on a PC, if not an app on a phone, required specialised machinery and complicated electronics.

The aim of this project is to produce an annotated inventory of our legacy equipment. Ultimately we would like to be able to contribute some of the equipment to exhibitions in the University’s Museum of the History of Science and Technology – but to be able to do this, we need to find out exactly what we have first!

The idea is to gather all the equipment together in the phonetics lab, photograph each piece and accompany the photograph by a bit of text explaining what the equipment was used for, based on internet research and trawls through old departmental reports in which then staff members wrote about their research: reports on instrumental analyses tend to explain what equipment was used.  Based on this research, we will decide which items to keep and which to dispose of, and we will turn a corner of the phonetics lab into a new storage, and perhaps exhibition space.

Relevant fields of linguistics

• Phonetics

To contribute to this project, you do not need to know a lot about instrumental phonetic analysis or electronics. You do need to be interested in finding out what old machines do, and interested in doing a bit of historical detective work.

Start date: any time during the remainder of Semester 2, 2016-17, or later during the summer

End date: 6 weeks later    

Hours per week: 3                                         

Activities to be undertaken by RES student:

• Help getting pieces of equipment currently in storage moved into the phonetics lab.
• Photograph each piece of equipment and investigate what kind of analysis it was used for, through internet research and research using departmental reports.
• Write up the research results in language that is understandable by a general audience.
• Contribute to thinking about how to exhibit some of the equipment in future.

Number of possible students: 3

Likely outcomes:

• Expertise in producing an inventory of historical materials.
• Expertise in doing internet and documentary research.
• Expertise in interpreting reports on instrumental phonetic analysis.
• Expertise in writing for a general audience.

Students who have questions about this project should contact Dr Leendert Plug on [email protected]

If you would like to work on this project, please complete an RES application form and send it to Leendert Plug by May 8th 2017. If your application is successful, the supervisor will be in touch in due course.