Research Associate Opportunities: Emote VR Voicer

Two Research Associate Opportunities: Emote VR Voicer

We're excited to highlight two complementary Research Associate positions at MMU's School of Digital Arts (SODA) that will interest the games and creative technology community.

The Emote VR Voicer project — funded by the AHRC — is developing a VR application that translates the emotional content of live vocal utterances into morphing 3D animated shapes. Using speech recognition, natural language processing, and sentiment analysis, it sits at a genuinely unusual intersection of AI, interactive design, and wellbeing research. Both roles are part of a small interdisciplinary team of artists, a psychologist, and AI researchers. Prior arts-sector experience isn't required for either post — curiosity and openness to collaboration are.

Research Associate (VR) — This role focuses on VR development in Unity with C#: integrating AI models that map detected emotional meaning from audio to real-time visuals, procedural animation, and image synthesis. 0.5 FTE, fixed-term for 8 months, primarily on-campus.

Research Associate (AI) — This role focuses on training and fine-tuning the AI models themselves: building systems that classify emotion from both audio and spoken/sung language in Python, then porting them into Unity. 0.5 FTE, fixed-term for 6 months, hybrid.

Both posts are based in Manchester at £35,608 pro rata (Grade 7), and both close on 19 March 2026.

To discuss either role, contact Adinda van 't Klooster at A.vant.Klooster@mmu.ac.uk.