معرفی
Dr Leendert Plug is an Associate Professor in Linguistics and Phonetics at the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, where he has been a faculty member since 2007. He previously held positions at the University of Sheffield and completed his MA and PhD at the University of York. He earned his first degree in English Literature and Linguistics from the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. He has served as Director of Linguistics and Phonetics from 2015 to 2022 and again from 2023 until August 2025, with a year of research leave in 2018–2019.
His research lies at the intersection of phonetics, speech perception, and interactional linguistics. Key areas of investigation include phonetic reduction, disfluency, speech tempo perception, and the temporal organisation of consonant sequences, with a focus on Dutch, English, and some work on Arabic. His current research explores within-speaker variation in speech production, supported by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Grant, which led to the creation of the Leeds Multi-Session Corpus of Standard Southern British English. His methodological approach integrates experimental phonetics and laboratory-based analysis.
Leendert Plug has secured significant research funding from major UK research councils, including the ESRC, British Academy, and Leverhulme Trust. He is actively involved in academic service, serving on the editorial boards of the Journal of Phonetics and Studies in Phonetics and Phonology, and is a member of the British Association of Academic Phoneticians and the International Phonetic Association. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
- British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Grant (2022–2024)
- ESRC Grant: Prosodic marking revisited
- British Academy Grant: Syllables, segments and speech tempo
- Leverhulme Trust Grant: Speech tempo perception and missing sounds
He supervises postgraduate research and contributes to PhD training opportunities in linguistics. He is currently writing a textbook in phonetics and phonology for Cambridge University Press. His academic leadership includes convening team-taught modules and delivering instruction in phonetics, phonology, research methods, and academic skills. He is embedded in research groups focused on language variation, speech production and perception, and broader linguistics.
