UVic Chair of Linguistics elected IPA President

In August 2011, Dr. John Esling, chair of UVic’s Department of Linguistics, was elected president of the International Phonetic Association (IPA), at the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences in Hong Kong.

Esling, a linguist and phonetician whose research has helped advance scientific understanding of speech, taught at the University of Leeds before coming to UVic in 1981. The IPA is the oldest representative organization for phoneticians, established in Paris in 1886, with the aim of promoting the scientific study of phonetics.

Esling is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; currently editor of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association; and director of UVic’s Phonetics Laboratory. Esling has also participated in the development of several phonetics teaching and speech analysis software programs.