The Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
The Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics is based in the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, a brand-new building at the University of Oxford, which accommodates seven faculties, two institutes, a new library, a large number of well-equipped teaching and seminar rooms, and performance and arts venues. Each faculty has its own centre and social hub within a building which also facilitates interdisciplinary and collaborative work. At the heart of the building is a large atrium – called the Great Hall – bringing light into the building, and serving as a space for informal work, relaxation, meeting with friends, taking breaks, having refreshments – and much more.
The building will enable the recently-established Cultural Programme to flourish, with a 500-seat world class concert hall, a theatre, experimental performance venue, 100-seat cinema, and exhibition hall. Many of these venues will support academic and student-led activities, as well as performances and creative works by professional artists. The cultural programme will enrich the lives of students, and will also provide opportunities to get involved.
Phonetics Laboratory
The experimental area consists of a recording studio, an acoustics and speech processing laboratory, a physiological laboratory and a speech perception laboratory. Hardware for physiological study, available to students and staff, includes labial electromyography, oral/nasal aerometry (measurement of air pressures and flow) and ultrasound tongue imaging.
The studios, for recording and for running experiments, are equipped with high-quality microphones and digital recording equipment, and computer systems for the presentation of visual and/or auditory stimuli.
Language and Brain Laboratory
The language and Brain Laboratory offers research staff and students bespoke facilities and specialist equipment to conduct a wide variety of behavioural, eye-tracking and neurolinguistics experiments. There is a common room for tutorials and meetings.
The laboratory has separate spaces for Neurolinguistics, Eye-Tracking, Production, and Behavioural studies. We have two electronically shielded sound-proofed climate-controlled EEG booths for recording brain waves. EEG recordings are made using high-impedance (300 Mohms) active electrode systems: we are currently conducting experiments on two systems: BioSemi and Brain Vision. An additional soundproof room is used for high quality audio recordings and eye-tracking studies. Our state-of-the-art SR Research Eyelink1000 eye tracker can be used on its own, or in combination with our EEG equipment.
One of the largest spaces is the Behavioural Lab, where there is bespoke equipment and software to run experiments such as lexical decision tasks or timed forced choice experiments. Eight participants can currently run simultaneously at individually screened desks, or up to 16 participants with a projector setup. All of the testing rooms have an associated control room to monitor the experiments and analyse the results.
Library provision
Oxford's library provision in linguistics is one of the largest in the country. Oxford's libraries are superbly provided with material on theoretical linguistics, the structure and history of European languages, ancient Indo-European languages, and non-Indo-European as well as Indo-European languages of Asia.
There are 340 general reader seats, and around 80 graduate study seats – with a further 320 formal and informal study seats throughout the building outside the library.
Open-shelf lending collections are complemented by access to electronic resources, scan on demand, and material requested from the Bodleian’s Collections Storage Facility. As well as the Library’s extensive staffed hours, there is a 24/7 study space, including smart lockers for self-collect of borrowable items out of hours. Subject support is provided by a team of subject librarians.
