Research Fellow

Location: 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford, OX2 6PY

The Department of Education wishes to appoint a Research Fellow on a full-time, fixed term basis until 12^th July 2025. Reporting to the Principal Investigator, Dr Elizabeth Wonnacott, you will work on the ‘Language learning as expectation: a discriminative perspective’ project funded by the Leverhulme Trust.  The work is part of a collaborative project with Dr Michael Ramscar, University of Tubingen as consultant.

You will work to independently implement and test a series of language learning experiments, testing the predictions of a naive discriminative learning approach to human language. These tests will be done with both adult and child learners, with the majority of the tests being conducted online, however child testing will be conducted online and in schools (depending on the Covid-19 situation). You will be responsible for managing your own research and administrative activities including recruiting participants, developing materials and programming the experiments, analysing data using R, as well as presenting and writing up findings for dissemination at conferences and in research publications.

The successful candidate will hold, or be close to completion of, a relevant PhD/DPhil, together with relevant experience, have an excellent background and understanding in psychology of language/language development, or a strong background in a related area of cognitive science and a willingness to learn about language science. You will also have a strong background in conducting psychological experiments, experience of developing and building computational models for language development research, and an excellent understanding of statistical analysis.

Excellent communication skills are essential including the ability to write for publication, present research proposals and result and represent the research group at meetings.

Due to the requirements of the role a satisfactory enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check is required.

The position will be based at the Department of Education, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford, and is available from 1^st June 2023 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Applications for this vacancy are to be made online and you will be required to upload a supporting statement and CV as part of your online application. Your supporting statement must explain how you meet each of the selection criteria for the post.

For further details of the role, please see the job description. The closing date for applications is midday on Friday 14^th April 2023 and only applications received by this deadline will be considered. Interviews are likely to take place in early May.

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