The International Phonetic Association (IPA) has had a dynamic year in 2024, marked by significant initiatives and advancements aimed at supporting the phonetics community.
Journal of the International Phonetic Association switching to open access
In April 2024, a new publication agreement was signed between the IPA and Cambridge University Press for the Journal of the International Phonetic Association. The journal is switching to fully open access. All articles accepted for publication in JIPA will be published with a Creative Commons license and will be freely available to read online. Printed copies of JIPA will no longer be produced and distributed as of 2025. This change ensures broad dissemination of phonetics research and equitable access for all scholars. The costs of open access publication will be covered through agreements between the publisher and the author’s institution, payment of article processing charges (APCs) from grant or other funds, or else waived entirely (for IPA members), ensuring every author can publish and enjoy the benefits of open access.
IPA Committees
2024 also saw a review of the IPA Council Committees, first established in 2017 to streamline operations and broaden the Association’s impact in the associated academic fields and beyond. With renewed membership, announced in May 2024, these committees are poised to continue their vital role in advancing the IPA’s mission. We extend our gratitude to outgoing members for their contributions and warmly welcome the new appointees. The following list portraits the seven committees in terms of their tasks and committee membership.
Alphabet, Charts and Fonts - Adrian Simpson (Chair), Michael Ashby, John Esling, James Kirby, Asher Laufer, Benjamin V. Tucker
Contact point for proposals for changes to the alphabet or chart; production of IPA charts in various fonts, file formats, and image resolutions; online distribution of these charts; liaison with SIL and Unicode Technical Committee; liaison with International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association; soliciting, vetting, and disseminating IPA charts in languages other than English and tables of correspondences between IPA and non-IPA symbols.
Conference Sponsorships and Student Awards - Ioana Chitoran (chair), Pam Beddor, John Esling, Jonathan Harrington, Katerina Nicolaidis, Masaki Taniguchi
Policies for conference/workshop sponsorship; evaluation of requests to the IPA for such sponsorship. Guidelines and criteria for evaluating applications for IPA Student Awards and Gösta Bruce travel awards; solicitation and evaluation of applications for these awards. Guidelines and criteria for evaluating applications for the student mobility program; solicitation and evaluation of applications for these awards. Determination and management of annual budget for awards.
Education – Patricia Ashby (chair), Maria Maria-Josep Solé
Educational content of the IPA’s website and other educational outreach to students and teachers of phonetics.
History - Michael Ashby (chair), Marc Garellek, Mária Gósy
History of the Association and its journals, and of phonetics more generally. Liaison with ISCA SIG on History of Speech Communication Research, The Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas, and with the historical acoustic-phonetics collection (HAPS) at TU Dresden.
PhD Thesis Award - Sónia Frota (co-chair), Martine Grice (co-chair), Taehong Cho, Lisa Davidson, Thais Christofaro Silva, Maria Josep Solé.
Evaluation of applications to the IPA PhD Thesis Award. The award distinguishes the best PhD Thesis in the broad area of Phonetics, Speech Sciences, and Laboratory Phonology. The prize is awarded annually to a PhD student who has produced an outstanding PhD thesis with substantial academic potential and that contributes to advancing the scientific study of the field.
Phonetic Documentation of Languages – Pat Keating (chair), Marc Garellek, Ailbhe Ni Chasaide, Plinio Barbosa, James Kirby, Alexis Michaud, Janet Fletcher
Encourage and fund phonetic fieldwork through existing organizations; offer expert advice to fieldworkers; liaison with archives of language materials.
Social Media and Outreach - Mariapaola D’ Imperio (chair), Katerina Nicolaidis, Jane Setter
Develop our social media, including our website, our Facebook and Twitter accounts, and our presence in Wikipedia, work on content to be posted, especially with a view to outreach to non-members who are interested in phonetics and the IPA.
IPA PhD Thesis Award
A further major milestone was the launch of the IPA PhD Thesis Award in May 2024, which celebrates outstanding doctoral research. The IPA PhD Thesis award distinguishes the best PhD Thesis in the broad area of Phonetics, Speech Sciences, and Laboratory Phonology. This prize is awarded to a PhD student who has produced an outstanding PhD thesis with substantial academic potential and that contributes to advancing the scientific study of the field. The winner of the 2024 award was Simona Sbranna from the University of Cologne, recognized for her thesis titled “Developing linguistic competence in second language learning: fluency and prosody in Italian learners of German.” The competition saw submissions of exceptionally high quality, reflecting the vibrant state of research in phonetics. Decisions were made by the IPA PhD Thesis Award Committee. On January 10, 2025, IPA Secretary Oliver Niebuhr visited the University of Cologne to personally present Simona Sbranna with her award certificate.
Conference co-sponsorship and IPA Student Awards
The IPA continued its co-sponsoring activities of phonetically related conferences and events in years in which no ICPhS takes place. In 2024, two major international conferences were co-sponsored: Speech Prosody 2024 in Leiden, Netherlands (July 2–5), and the 5th International Symposium on Applied Phonetics (ISAPh 2024) in Tartu, Estonia (September 30–October 2). Student early-bird registration fees were covered for nine participants across both events, selected by the IPA Committee on Conference Sponsorships and Student Awards.
The seven awardees of the Speech Prosody conference were: Marlene Böttcher (Kiel University, Germany); Jiajun Gao (The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China); Wenxi Fei (The Hong-Kong Polytechnic University); Celeste Olson (University of Calgary, Canada); Xiaomu Ren (University of Glasgow, UK); Thomas Sostarics (Northwestern University, USA); and Jungyun Seo (University of Michigan, USA).
The two awardees of the ISAPh symposium were: Yixuan Huang (Waseda University, Japan) and Lingyun Gao (Radboud University, the Netherlands).
Congratulations to the awardees!
Phonetic Documentation of Languages
In 2024 the committee awarded a total of $10,000 to the Endangered Language Fund ($2000) and the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme ($8000) to support three proposals with a phonetics/phonology component. These were:
• Naijing Liu, on Tsum
• Xiyao Wang, on Ho Le She
• Quynh Nguyen Thu, on Pa-Then
The committee members who reviewed 2024 proposals were Plinio Almeida Barbosa, Marc Garellek, James Kirby, Alexis Michaud, and Ailbhe Ni Chasaide, to whom many thanks. Pat Keating, Chair.
IPA Student Mobility Program
Another novelty was the introduction of the IPA Student Mobility Program in November 2024, designed to facilitate research exchanges and foster global collaboration. This program offers funding of up to €1,500 to support student members, especially from resource-limited countries, in undertaking short-term research stays abroad. Participants will benefit from academic networking, skill development in experimental techniques, and new opportunities for collaboration across laboratories.
