The Erasmus+ CIRCE project online seminar “Biased ears: investigating and reducing accent discrimination in hiring evaluations” will be held on 24 November 2025 at 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM (CEST). Speaker: Samantha Jackson, University of Toronto, Canada.
The free seminar, organised by the CIRCE project in collaboration with DFCLAM University of Siena, H2IOSC project and Cnr-Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale “Antonio Zampolli”, will be included in the H2IOSC Training Environment to enable all interested parties to access the event registration.
Speaker Bio
Samantha Jackson is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Department of Linguistics and the Graduate Centre for Academic Communication. Her research interests stem from the need to address societal issues such as accent discrimination, bias in large language models and under-documented language acquisition norms. Her pedagogical interests focus on student engagement and research-informed teaching.
Summary
As international migration continues to increase (IOM 2024), the last few years have seen a growth in nationalist politics (Bieber 2018) and anti-immigrant sentiments, despite economic reliance on immigrants in many Global North countries. Immigrants bring not only their skills and experience, but also their multifaceted identities, which are partly reflected in their accents. A listener’s language attitudes often reflect broader social attitudes (Lippi-Green 2012), influencing their valuation of their interlocutor’s words. In the workplace, such biases can influence decisions in hiring, promotion and conflict resolution, creating pressures for immigrants to assimilate linguistically. In the current climate, it is therefore important that equitable workplace practices are engrained. This talk uses Canada as a case study to explore accent discrimination against immigrants in the job interview, a key “gatekeeping encounter” (Erickson 1976). Canada’s laws promote mutual acceptance of all cultures and identities. The project involved 96 Human Resources students trained in recruitment and selection, who evaluated scripted interview responses from women born and raised in Canada, China, England, Germany, India, Jamaica, and Nigeria. Participants were unaware the responses were scripted. A mixed methods analysis of scores and comments indicates significant bias against non-Canadian accents. The standard Canadian accent was associated with greater competence, comprehensibility, desirability and aesthetic appeal. The talk concludes with an introduction to a new cross-disciplinary project aimed at mitigating the biases that were uncovered.