Pavel Iosad
Professor
- Linguistics and English Language
- School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
Contact details
- Email: pavel.iosad@ed.ac.uk
- Web: Academic website
- Web: Schedule an appointment
Address
- Street
-
Room 3.08, Dugald Stewart Building
- City
- 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9AD
Availability
Office hours in Semester 1: Monday 13:10–14:00, Wednesday 11:10–12:00. Appointments via https://piosad.youcanbook.me
Background
I graduated from the theoretical and applied linguistics programme at Moscow State University in my native Russia in 2007 and completed doctoral study at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Theoretical Linguistics, University of Tromsø, Norway, with a thesis on the sound patterns of Welsh and Breton. Before coming to Edinburgh I held a lectureship at the University of Ulster. I was Lecturer in Theoretical Phonology from 2013, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2019 and to Professor of Synchronic and Diachronic Phonology in 2024.
Responsibilities & affiliations
I am affiliated to the Phonetics and Phonology, Language Variation and Change, and English Language Research Groups; I am also an affiliate of the Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics.
Undergraduate teaching
In 2024/2025, I convene the pre-Honours course Linguistics and English Language 1A, where I also contribute to teaching and the data analysis component. From January 2025 I am on research leave.
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
I am interested in enquiries from prospective students with interests in the areas of theoretical and historical phonology. My main expertise is in Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic linguistics, but I am more than happy to entertain proposals that go beyond these languages.
Current PhD students supervised
- Jakub Musil: Vowel insertion in the Gaelic languages (with Warren Maguire, Will Lamb (Celtic & Scottish Studies))
- Anna Laoide-Kemp: Initial consonant mutations in Irish (with Peter Ackema)
- Brandon Kieffer: Historical phonology of Great Lakes Bantu (with Patrick Honeybone, Ben Molineaux)
- Iris Kamil: Semitic historical morphology (with Itamar Kastner)
- Daithí Knowles (Celtic & Scottish Studies): History of Achill Irish (with Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh)
- Ekaterina Medvedeva (University of Leipzig): Stress in Modern Russian (external supervisor; main supervisor Eva Zimmermann)
- Jack Heitman: Historical sociolinguistics of post-Roman Britain (with Warren Maguire, Alex Woolf (History, University of St Andrews))
- Ziche Chen: Phonological reconstruction of Middle Chinese (with Warren Maguire, Nathan Hill (Trinity College Dublin))
Past PhD students supervised
- Jade Jørgen Sandstedt: ‘Feature specifications and contrast in vowel harmony: The orthography and phonology of Old Norwegian height harmony’
- Christopher Lewin (Celtic & Scottish Studies): ‘Aspects of the historical phonology of Manx’
Research summary
Theoretical phonology, phonological interfaces, historical phonology, phonological typology, Celtic languages, Germanic languages, Slavic languages, scholarship of teaching and learning