David Willis is part of a team that has been awarded a grant of 2.5 million Swiss francs (£2.33m) for a new Census of Urban and Rural Language in England and Wales (CURLEW). Other team members are Adrian Leemann (Bern), David Britain (Bern), and Paul Foulkes (York). The grant is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation as part of a co-investigator scheme with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

CURLEW will be the first large-scale, systematic survey of English dialects in England and Wales in more than 75 years. Using app-based, time-efficient methods, the project will document linguistic variation across urban and rural communities, generations, social classes, genders, and ethnic backgrounds.

The project is expected to start in autumn 2026 and numerous positions will be advertised (postdocs, PhDs, student and research assistants). In Oxford, the project will bring a postdoc, a funded DPhil position, and additional student research positions.

CURLEW will provide new insights into how decades of social and demographic change have shaped the English language – with outputs ranging from scholarly publications to an accessible dialect atlas.