What are we?

The Laboratory is a service of the Faculty of Philology and Communication of the UB. Founded in 1978, it is the oldest university phonetics laboratory in Spain. It carries out both educational and research activities.

On the educational side, it supports the practical classes of the phonetics subjects of several areas of knowledge: linguistics, Spanish philology, English philology, etc. In addition, subjects such as Laboratory Phonology are entirely taught in the Laboratory.

As far as research is concerned, the Laboratory is the headquarters of a research team in experimental phonetics that develops its own research projects (both basic and applied research). The Laboratory has been the headquarters of the project Technologies derived from AMPER-CAT, and the members of the Laboratory take part in other projects related to phonetics.

The Laboratory transfers knowledge to other research groups and to firms. It provides services to all those who need to carry out experiments or studies with sounds used in communication, or in need of speech analyses services to implement on their systems, as in the award-winning application for learning to speak in public Chiara. In addition, it carries out dissemination tasks (like, for example, collaborating with Cosmocaixa in the Talking Brains exhibition). The Laboratory also provides forensic phonetics services for lawyers and detectives. Finally, the Laboratoy proudly collaborates with otolaryngologists and audiologists in the field of speech therapy.