Gerry Docherty

Gerry Docherty is a Professor of Phonetics at Griffith University's School of Humanities, Languages & Social Sciences. Previously, he served as Dean of Research at Griffith's Arts, Education & Law Group (2013-2024) and as Professor of Phonetics at Newcastle University (UK). His research focuses on quantitative acoustic analysis of speech, particularly social-indexical phonetic variability and its implications for phonetic theory.

• Education: B.A. in Modern Languages (Salford University, 1981), Ph.D. in Linguistics (Edinburgh University, 1989)

His work spans sociophonetics, clinical phonetics, and speech sound patterning, with a focus on regional accents, vowel variation, and speech production in both typical and atypical populations. He has secured multiple ARC-funded Discovery Projects, including studies on West Australian English and regional Australian accents.

Notable funded research includes:

• ARC Discovery Project DP230100464: 'Voices of Regional Australia: The Linguistic Patterning of Local Attachment' (2023-2026)
• ARC Discovery Project DP130104275: 'The social dynamics of language: a study of phonological variation and change in West Australian English' (2013-2019)
• CoE for the Dynamics of Language Grant: 'Analysis tools for large speech corpora' (2016-2017)

Gerry Docherty is a member of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research and has supervised doctoral projects in sociophonetics, theoretical phonetics, and clinical phonetics.