Outstanding Undergraduate Dissertation in Linguistics

The LAGB invites each UK university with an undergraduate teaching programme in linguistics to nominate one undergraduate dissertation or long essay for the annual Outstanding Undergraduate Dissertation in Linguistics award. Nominated dissertations may be on any topic within the field of linguistics. Submissions should be major, original pieces of undergraduate work. As a rough guide, we expect submissions to be around 8,000 words in length (equivalent to a 25-page article in Journal of Linguistics), but longer or shorter submissions will be accepted, as we recognise that different programmes have different requirements. The fundamental criteria are originality and excellence.

The LAGB committee selects three winners each year. Winners receive a free one-year LAGB membership and are announced before the Association’s Annual Meeting. Each nominated dissertation is also recognised on the LAGB website, subject to the student’s consent.

The 2025 winners are listed below:

First Place – Yasmin Carruthers (University of Aberdeen)
An Exploration of Turn-Taking and Knowledge Asymmetry in Google’s NotebookLM Dialogue

Second Place – Matteo Salomone (Queen Mary University of London)
Variations on Ungrammatical Structures in At-a-Glance Language Processing

Third Place – Gemma Bearpark (Newcastle University)
Cross-Linguistic Influence in the Acquisition of Wh-Questions by French–English Bilingual Children: A Comparison with Monolingual French Children

Call for nominations  2025–2026

The LAGB is now inviting nominations for the  award. Each UK university with an undergraduate linguistics programme may nominate one dissertation or long essay. Nominations should be submitted by 24 July 2026.

Please refer to the attached Call for Nominations and Nomination Form for full details of the eligibility criteria, submission requirements, and nomination process.