LAURA: The Leverhulme Trust Aural Diversity Doctoral Research Hub

Researchers know that autistic people often experience problems with sound sensitivity and processing speech (e.g. Haesen et al., 2011). But many positive experiences with sound give pleasure and are under-researched, such as an increased capacity for detail and structure in sound (e.g. Brinkert & Remington, 2020; Woods & Estes 2023) . This PhD will use a mixed-methods approach to characterise the full range of autistic listening experience, including interviews/focus groups, listening tests and EEG measurement. Some experience of working with EEG methods and data is desirable.  

Supervisors: Bill Davies and Sam Gregory (Salford) 

Autistic individuals show differences to non-autistic individuals in voice processing, including differences around processing social signals in voices (e.g. Haesen et al., 2011). However autistic individuals process social signals from other autistic individuals with more fluency than from non-autistic individuals and vice versa, i.e., the double empathy problem (e.g. Crompton et al., 2020). Yet, there is limited research into how autistic individuals process the voices of other autistic individuals. This PhD would help fill this gap using social cognitive experimental methods.  

Supervisors: Sam Gregory and Bill Davies (Salford) 

How can composers make music which takes into account the needs of neurodivergent participants in collaborative and community music projects? Can collaborative and participatory methods ensure that these needs are respected in the outcomes, and what methods might be developed to do so more effectively? This project would generate practice-based outcomes for, and with neurodiverse communities, with input from creatives identifying as neurodivergent, and assess their effectiveness in making work which is built around the needs of these communities. Ideally, you will be a composer with experience of community music projects.

Supervisors: Alan Williams and Adam Hart (Salford) 

Hearing loss can reduce the enjoyment people get from listening to and creating music. While hearing aids can include personalised music programmes, the success of these is mixed. Rather than take a standard stereo mix and try and improve it via a hearing aid, would better results be achieved through personalised music production? In this PhD you will work closely with sound engineers using a citizen science approach to the research. The sound engineers will be tasked with personalising music to sound best for their own diverse hearing. This will reveal approaches to music production that allow for different hearing acuities, which can then be used to improve the listening experience of people with a hearing loss.

Supervisors: Trevor Cox and Adam Hart (Salford)

The enjoyment of live performances is highly dependent on the aural experience in the audience. This project focuses on strategies to deliver appropriate audio content to audiences with diverse aural profiles. Some of these strategies might investigate the use of different live sound zones across an audience or the use of augmented audio targeting specific individuals. Appropriate knowledge of live sound reproduction engineering as well as audio signal processing are desirable skills for this project.

Supervisors: Adam Hart and Bruno Fazenda (Salford)

How does synthetic speech intelligibility affect the language development of diverse young children? From an early age, children are using digital media including television and touchscreen apps. Importantly, digital media has been linked both positively and negatively to young children’s language development (Jing et al., 2023). This PhD will explore the intelligibility of digital speech (via electronic toys, television, touchscreen apps, digital audio players) for typically developing monolingual children, bilingual children and children with cochlear implants to understand the role of aural diversity on language learning from digital technology.

Supervisors: Gemma Taylor and Trevor Cox (Salford)

Understanding the role of early acoustic environments and aural diversity on young children’s learning and development. The first 5 years of life are essential for children’s healthy development and children’s learning and development is strongly influenced by their early environments. Understanding the role of early acoustic environments and aural diversity on young children’s learning will be an important step in understanding how we can best support children during the first 5 years of life. This PhD will explore children’s auditory experiences across a range of common environments typically experienced at this age both indoors and outdoors and measure the impact on children’s learning and performance across a range of skills (e.g., vocabulary, executive function, working memory). The target population for this PhD could include typically developing children, neurodiverse children or children with hearing impairments across the first 5 years of life.

Supervisors: Gemma Taylor and Bill Davies (Salford)

The range of auditory experiences and abilities individuals possess, can have an impact on learning and affect learners’ preferences for auditory (and other) learning styles. Understanding how aural diversity influences learning is crucial for designing spaces that cater to the diverse needs of students. To do so, the project will engage with a variety of educational settings and will explore how different aural environments can impact on the learning experience to facilitate more inclusionary educational settings. Design guidelines will be developed to improve the acoustic environment of some educational spaces.

Supervisors: Bill Davies and Athina Moustaka (Salford)

In mainstream secondary school education, young people with hearing loss face distinct challenges that profoundly affect their learning, peer interactions, and self-esteem. This PhD project will explore the unique challenges and acculturation experiences of these young individuals in educational settings that predominantly adhere to an ‘auraltypical’ or "hearing norm." These students encounter a myriad of complex issues, such as language and communication barriers, educational challenges, and divergent perspectives on Hearing and Deaf culture. Notably, children with hearing loss are especially susceptible to social exclusion (Coster et al., 2013).

Such challenges often result in difficulties in forming and maintaining relationships, which in turn can intensify feelings of isolation and social exclusion (Olsson, Dag, & Kullberg, 2018; Murray et al., 2007). Moreover, discrimination, taking forms such as bullying and educational obstacles, further complicates their experiences (Smith, 2013; Wheeler et al., 2007). These challenges can have a significant impact on their quality of life, potentially leading to decreased social interaction and depression in later life (Kochkin and Rogin 2000; World Health Organization 2015). This research project aims to provide a deeper understanding of these issues, contributing towards a more inclusive and supportive educational environment for young people with hearing loss.

This research will use a co-production approach, ensuring that young people with hearing loss on the aural diverse spectrum are active partners in the research process. The project will employ participatory methods, such as focus groups, world cafés, and young people's forums, to help young people identify research priorities and explore the challenges and facilitators they experience in an 'auraltypical' world across their learning and psychosocial development within a mainstream secondary school setting. Co-production techniques involving collaborative analysis and interpretation of data will be utilised to empower young people and ensure that their insights shape the research outcomes. 

• Coster, W., M. Law, G. Bedell, K. Liljenquist, Y. C. Kao, M. Khetani, and R. Teplicky. 2013. “School Participation, Supports and Barriers of Students with and Without Disabilities.” Child: Care, Health and Development 39 (4): 535–543
• Kochkin, S., and C. Rogin. 2000. “Quantifying the Obvious: The Impact of Hearing Aids on Quality of Life.” The Hearing Review 7 (1): 8–34.
• Murray, J. B., Klinger, L., & McKinnon, C. C. (2007). The deaf: An exploration of their participation in community life. OTJR: Occupation, Participation and Health, 27(3), 113-120.
• Olsson, S., Dag, M., & Kullberg, C. (2018). Deaf and hard-of-hearing adolescents’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion in mainstream and special schools in Sweden. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 33(4), 495-509.
• Smith, D. H. (2013). Deaf adults: Retrospective narratives of school experiences and teacher expectations. Disability & Society, 28(5), 674-686.Smith, D. H.  (2013). Disability & Society.
• Wheeler, A., Archbold, S., Gregory, S., & Skipp, A. (2007). Cochlear implants: The young people's perspective. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 12(3), 303-316.
• World Health Organization. 2015. “Deafness and Hearing Loss.”

Supervisors: Jay Vickers and Gemma Taylor (Salford)

Machine learning algorithms are increasing being used to model human listening. In most cases, machine listening algorithms are developed using ground truth data generated with psychoacoustic experiments on people with ‘normal’ hearing. This results in machine learning algorithms that are then biased against people with diverse hearing. This matters, because these algorithms are then used by other machine learners e.g. to develop better hearing aid processors. In this project, you will develop machine learning models of attention, with the aim of exploring how to best incorporate more diverse hearing. You will need to be able to program Python within machine learning frameworks and have an interest in psychoacoustics.

Supervisors: Trevor Cox and Sunil Vadera (Salford)

There’s a proliferation of virtual display technologies for entertainment, training and marketing, among other applications. Typically, content in these platforms does not comply with needs for those with diverse aural perception modes. This project will research how these technologies may be made more inclusive for those with hearing difference. The project will entail creation of environments in VR/AR platforms and the design of subjective testing to understand response to inclusive strategies. Skill in programming, production of immersive audio environments and design and deployment of subjective testing are desirable.

Supervisors: Bruno Fazenda and Chris Hughes (Salford)

Response to synthetic voices is an understudied research topic, and as more and more AI assistants are being developed to help with a myriad of societal issues, it is important to understand how these voices are processed. When judging synthetic voices, what do listeners think is behind the voice? How are peoples’ judgements influenced by stereotypes that they use with human voices? What are the individual differences in how synthetic voices are tolerated and embraced? What are the implications of this? For example, how do different individuals process information from digital assistants? In this project you will develop experimental methods to answer the key questions posed. Qualitative methods can also be employed to investigate the subjective user experience.

Supervisors: Sam Gregory and Trevor Cox (Salford)

Some aurally divergent individuals can find many environmental sounds as being disturbing, confusing or even painful to hear. Recent work in AI has improved the capability of sound source separation, sound (e.g., speech) enhancement and reduction (e.g., background noise). This project would investigate deep learning techniques for sound identification and separation with the aim of facilitating real time rebalancing of environmental sounds based on individual requirements or needs.

Supervisors: Ben Shirley and Chris Hughes (Salford)

Anecdotal reports note the stress-inducing sonic environments of ICU wards, particularly under pandemic conditions. Much information vital to healthcare is conveyed through sound, but staff report difficulties in streaming the audio content appropriately, and in localising monitor sounds, creating a ‘wall of noise’ effect. Existing research suggests reduced auditory streaming to be affected by the presence of non-neurotypical conditions; also evidenced is the ability of trained musicians to stream and localise sounds more effectively. Could training healthcare staff to listen more effectively using musical training assist them in identifying and localising information-bearing sounds in the clinical environment?

Supervisors: Alan Williams and Phil Brissenden (Salford)

Current methods for quantifying the impact of noise on exposed communities are based on meta-analyses of exposure-response relationships between noise exposure and annoyance.  These assume an average community responding in a consistent way to environmental noise exposure.  We do know that everybody ‘hears differently’ and therefore will respond differently to noise.  Because of this, new evidence and novel methods are needed for best practice and regulation to consider aural and personal diversity in decision-making.  This PhD will explore different approaches to incorporate aural and personal (e.g., noise sensitivity) diversity in the assessment and management of environmental noise exposure.

Supervisors: Antonio Torija Martinez and Robert Bendall (Salford)

Architectural spaces dominated by concrete, can influence the auditory experiences of individuals, with potential implications for neurodiverse populations. By considering factors such as reverberation, echo, and ambient noise levels the research aims to propose design principles and interventions that can enhance soundscapes in concrete-heavy spaces to better address the experiences of neurodivergent individuals.

Supervisors: Bill Davies and Athina Moustaka (Salford)

How does sound facilitate or inhibit choice in leisure and how do individual differences interact with environments?  Individuals may choose to seek calm quiet areas to participate in their leisure pursuits, whereas others actively choose areas with ambient background noise or even noisier environments. There is little research into the role of sound facilitating or inhibiting choice in participation in leisure occupations.

Supervisors: Victoria McQuillan and Bill Davies (Salford)

Music and identity have a complex interplay. Each individual has a unique relationship between these two factors, which makes understanding the relationship between them and neurodiversity all the more important. By doing so, sound engineers, musicians, music supervisors, and others in the audio industry can be more sensitive to their audiences in terms of how they interact with sound and create audio experiences that are tailored to their individual needs.

Supervisors: Duncan Williams and Garry Crawford (Salford)

How is aural diversity represented in AV and film culture? Does it explore the full range of hearing experiences? How do multimodal approaches consider aural diversity? Can some approaches be considered ableist and how can they be adapted to be more aurally inclusive?

Supervisors: Holly Rogers and John Drever

How does aural diversity shape our experience of sound through emotional and bodily states?

This project focuses on the affect, aural experiences and diversity, in understanding how sound is experienced and embodied by different people in different context, and how this shapes our understanding of the world, and in turn how this shapes us, and we shape it.

Supervisors: Garry Crawford and Gaynor Bagnall (Salford)

How the shared and unique rhythms and identities of places develop over time.

Places are shaped not just by the physicality but also their sounds, be this the noise of a factory, railway line, or the music that emanates from clubs, bars, or street cultures. This project therefore seeks to explore culture, locality, and the experiences of place, through sound.

Supervisors: Garry Crawford and Gaynor Bagnall (Salford)

The political and social power of sound, revealing how this varies greatly with individual and social context.

Just like the personal, sound is pollical. What sounds occur, where they occur, and also how we experience them are all shaped by social power relations. Sounds can be used for oppression, even violence, but can also be a source of resistance and rebellion. This project explores the contemporary urban context of sounds, and how they shape, control, or empower those who use and encounter them in their everyday lives.

Supervisors: Garry Crawford and Gaynor Bagnall (Salford)

Can interventions using hearing aids improve cognitive wellbeing and reduce dementia risk? Hearing loss in older age is known to negatively affect socialisation, with this having a negative impact on cognitive wellbeing, increasing risk of dementia, and other negative health outcomes (e.g. Loughrey et al., 2018). Yet, while hearing aids are available on the NHS in the UK, around 20% of people issued with them don’t use them. Further, while according to the British Academy of Audiology it is estimated that over 6 million Uk residents would benefit from hearing aids, only around 2 million people use them. However, hearing loss makes socialisation difficult, with research suggesting it is a significant barrier to participation in social activity (e.g. Chaintré et al., 2023). This includes participating in social activities such as singing groups, an activity known to benefit cognitive health  (e.g. Galinha et al., 2021).

This PhD would investigate the interaction between hearing loss and social isolation and seek to provide and assess interventions in this area. Including investigating barriers around use of hearing aids and singing. This PhD will use a mixed-methods approach. Interviews/focus groups would be used to understand issues from the perspective of those experiencing hearing loss, including hearing aid users, survey data would be collected to get a broad view of the issues, and experimental methods would be employed to design and test interventions.

Supervisors: Sam Gregory and  Rebecca Vos (Salford)

Many adults with chronic health conditions find fatigue among the most salient of their symptoms. There is also anecdotal evidence to suggest that fatigue and noise annoyance may interact: it can be harder to tolerate noise when fatigued, and being exposed to noise may worsen the fatigue symptoms. This project will take a participatory approach to investigate the interaction of fatigue and noise, working with adults who experience fatigue. The researcher will develop a model for the noise-fatigue process and also produce recommendations for more inclusive auditory environments.

Supervisors: Bethan Collins and Bill Davies (Salford)

It is well known that blind and visually impaired people use specific auditory cues to navigate their surrounding environment. Nonetheless, there is a barrier to sport and physical activity given the difficulty to interact with a more demanding activity and environmental setting. This project will investigate whether specific auditory cues may be used in everyday sport and physical exercise for an aurally diverse population. Augmented reality strategies or sonification of the environment and the activity will be investigated. Skills and knowledge desirable for this project are experience in research for the visually impaired, knowledge of human auditory localisation, spatial audio and programming.

Supervisors: Bethan Collins and Bruno Fazenda (Salford)

Which tools and environments work best, and which aspects of the acoustic environment best enable participation?

Supervisors: Bethan Collins and Bruno Fazenda (Salford)

Sensorineural hearing loss in older populations is a prevalent yet complex condition that significantly impacts auditory functions. This type of hearing impairment is particularly noticeable in challenging listening environments, such as social settings with background noise, and can lead to significant difficulties in word recognition and processing (Salvi, et al., 2018). When this hearing loss occurs alongside dementia, it not only exacerbates social isolation and cognitive decline but also adversely affects cognitive reserve, a crucial defense mechanism against brain changes (Panza, et al., 2015).

With the increasing global incidence of dementia, it is vital to understand the connection between hearing loss, dementia, and isolation (Powell, 2022). Individuals with dementia notably experience a decline in social engagement (Hackett, Steptoe, Cadar, & Fancourt, 2019), underscoring the importance of strategies that address aural diversity, aural decline, and their roles in isolation. This research aims to deepen our understanding from the perspectives of people with early-stage dementia and their families on how aural diversity and hearing loss are experienced and the ways in which they contribute to the isolation experienced by this vulnerable group.

The appointed candidate will employ Grounded Theory as their principal research methodology, a practice highly regarded in the social sciences for its efficacy in deriving new theories from empirical data (Strauss and Corbin, 1998; Charmaz, 2006, 2014). Essential to this research is the active involvement with key stakeholders, particularly individuals with dementia and their families. This engagement is crucial for gaining an understanding of aural diversity and the relationship it may play in isolation and loneliness in older adults with early-stage dementia.

• Hackett, R. A., Steptoe, A., Cadar, D., & Fancourt, D. (2019). Social engagement before and after dementia diagnosis in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. PLoS One, 14(8), e0220195.
• Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing Grounded Theory. A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. London: Sage
• Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing Grounded Theory. London: Sage
• Panza, F., Solfrizzi, V., Seripa, D., Imbimbo, B., Capozzo, R., Quaranta, N., Pilotto, A., Logroscino, G. (2015). Age-related hearing impairment and frailty in Alzheimer’s disease: interconnected associations and mechanisms. Front. Aging Neurosci. 7:113. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2015.00113
• Powell, D. S., Oh, E. S., Reed, N. S., Lin, F. R., & Deal, J. A. (2022). Hearing loss and cognition: what we know and where we need to go. Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 13, 769405.
• Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics Of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures For Developing Grounded Theory (2nd Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Salvi R, Ding D, Jiang H, Chen GD, Greco A, Manohar S, Sun W, Ralli M (2018) Hidden age-related hearing loss and hearing disorders: current knowledge and future directions. Hearing Balance Commun 16:74–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/21695717.2018.1442282

Supervisors: Jay Vickers and Sam Gregory (Salford)

Sensation and emotion are directly and indirectly linked. Whilst research suggests that sound is used to increase positive emotion and decrease negative emotion, sensation and hearing are omitted from models of emotion regulation. The PhD will investigate how aural diversity is associated with the strategic use of sound to up- or downregulate emotion and therefore have implications for the mental health and wellbeing of individuals with aural diversity.

Supervisors: Robert Bendall and Duncan Williams (Salford)

The therapeutic landscapes concept is one way of exploring the links between health, wellbeing and place (Gesler, 1992). A therapeutic experience within place is never guaranteed because places do not hold inherent qualities, but therapeutic experiences can happen through relational, subjective and diverse interactions with place. A therapeutic landscape experience also requires some level of agency in how the person interacts with the space in pursuit of a therapeutic experience (Bell et al., 2014; Biglin, forthcoming) and is closely aligned with theories of place-making in which every day social practices generate subjectivities that create a unique sense of place, belonging and security. This relational thinking has encouraged exploration of the ‘dynamic, contingent and ever-morphing constellations of bodies-subjects-objects-ideas-spaces that together work to enhance or destroy the therapeutic potential of the spaces in question’ (Emerson, 2019: 596). Yet, despite this relational thinking, and the common understanding that place and place-making is a multi-sensory experience, the therapeutic landscape literature is ocularcentric. However, to fully understand the therapeutic potential of place encounters beyond the visual it is key to explore how people experience, shape and respond to diverse multisensory qualities of the place encounter (Bell et al., 2023).

Forced migration and the process of seeking asylum is an embodied experience. Pre migration contexts are traumatic, impacting negatively on the body. The asylum process, described as a form of ‘slow violence’ (Darling, 2022), is characterised by a racialised loss of bodily control (Ugolotti, 2020). Thus, people seeking asylum and refugees engage in various forms of embodied place-based practice to counter, challenge and engender wellbeing whilst in new places. Including a number of sound-based practices, for example, engaging in music, song, and social dancing or even attending to the sounds and smell of cooking traditional food. These are all ways in which transnational belonging; emplaced memory, and associated forms of wellbeing are transported and practiced.

Vision is also prioritised by Western media when representing asylum and migration. Little and Vaughan-Williams (2017) summarise: as sufferers, migrants are framed through apolitical interactions and, as a threat, the migrant appears in militarised representations of dark-skinned males crossing a border. What is lost through the silencing of asylum seekers and refugees, voices and soundscapes? Furthermore, how do forces and experiences such as power and privilege, cultural, mobility, inequality and political marginalisation influence the listening and wellbeing experience within place? Using participatory-action research methods, particularly, soundscaping this PhD will explore the sound-based therapeutic sensescape experiences of asylum seekers and refugees. There is an expectation that the candidate will be involved in action-based dissemination activities.

Supervisors: Josephine Biglin and Jostine Loubser (Salford)

We are all subject to the effects of sound and noise in our environments. Sound events can create stress and annoyance or promote wellbeing. This project will investigate how individual differences, context and temporal changes modulate the effect that sound has on our mood regulation, with an emphasis on aurally diverse populations. Standard subjective testing techniques (such as listening tests) will be used to collect data on subjective responses to sound events and their impact on subject mood and wellbeing. There will be a particular emphasis on modulation dependent on diverse listening styles and profiles. Desirable experience and skills for this project are prior experience in research of sound and noise effects on human response, the design of listening studies and audio signal processing.

Supervisors: Victoria McQuillan and Bruno Fazenda (Salford)