PhD Studentship: Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship in AI-Enabled Digital Accessibility (ADA) University of Surrey in United Kingdom

[Fully funded 4-year studentship covers home or international tuition fees, maintenance at UKRI base levels (£20,780 for 2025/26), and £10,000 to support research and training needs.]

The University of Surrey invites applications for a fully funded PhD studentship as part of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship in AI-Enabled Digital Accessibility (ADA). This opportunity is designed for candidates interested in advancing digital accessibility through artificial intelligence, focusing on the challenges of language, sound, and vision in digital media. Digital media is integral to public information, government services, healthcare, finance, education, culture, and entertainment, making accessibility a crucial concern. However, achieving accessibility is complex due to multimodal and language-based interactions that require all senses, and often, the modality or language a user understands is not available or accessible.

To address these challenges, the ADA network empowers doctoral researchers to leverage AI for digital accessibility, employing translation across modalities (such as speech to subtitles or sign language, text simplification, or visual-to-verbal translation) and languages (including minority languages). With the growing volume of digital content, human resources alone cannot meet accessibility needs, making AI solutions essential. ADA equips graduates with skills to develop human-centric AI-enabled solutions that preserve accuracy, narrative coherence, and quality in digital content.

As a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholar, you will develop a project within ADA, working across disciplines such as language, translation, media accessibility, design studies, engineering, computer science, cognitive science, and social science. You will deepen your understanding of accessibility as a core concept and explore diverse research methods, combining AI advancements with human expertise to deliver personalized accessibility solutions. The programme offers supervision by interdisciplinary teams of world-leading academics, including Professor Sabine Braun, Professor Philip Jackson, Dr Elena Davitti, Professor Constantin Orasan, and Professor Christine Hine. You will also engage with other researchers in the ADA network and participate in masterclasses, lectures, workshops, and other activities to build and consolidate your skills.

The studentship is open to UK and international candidates, starting in October 2026. It covers home or international tuition fees, maintenance at UKRI base levels (£20,780 for 2025/26), and provides £10,000 to support research and training needs. Applicants must meet the entry requirements of the University of Surrey PhD programme. Required documents include a research proposal (1,000 words), a motivation letter (500 words), and a CV (maximum 2 pages) including academic qualifications. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an online recruitment workshop in April/May 2025, designed to select balanced cohorts best suited to benefit from ADA PhD training and contribute to multi-disciplinary teamwork addressing real-world accessibility challenges.

For enquiries, contact Professor Sabine Braun at [email protected] or Aimee Savage at [email protected]. This is an exceptional opportunity to join a vibrant research network and contribute to the development of innovative AI-enabled accessibility solutions for digital media.