Postdoctoral Research Associate

About the Role
A Postdoctoral Research Associate position is available in Prof Isabelle Mareschal’s group (QMUL), to work on emotion recognition in collaboration with Dr Maria Gendron (Yale University).

Understanding other people’s emotions is critical for social function and is therefore one of the most important tasks of social communication. One of the major cues we use to attempt to infer another’s emotional state is their facial expression. Although we appear to effortlessly attribute emotional states, such as those associated with the terms ‘sad’ or ‘happy’, to different facial expressions, it is now clear that we vary substantially in the facial expressions that we associate with emotional states. This individual variability is a potent source of miscommunication, and the aim of this proposal is to explain why this variability arises.

About You
The successful candidate will be expected to contribute to experimental design, running experiments, analysing results and writing research papers. An ability to analyse data in R, MATLAB or Python is essential. The candidate will join an international, multi-disciplinary team with cross site visits throughout the project. A PhD student also funded by the Leverhulme will collaborate with the PDRA on parts of the project. The candidate should be able to provide evidence of expertise in visual psychophysics and should have strong computing skills. Knowledge language models and statistical techniques would be an advantage.

About the School/Department/Institute/Project
The role sits within the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences one of the largest Schools within Queen Mary University of London. The school has a strong research output and demanding educational standards for its students, but all members benefit from a high level of academic and social integration. In addition, the School is committed to equality of opportunity and holds a Silver Athena SWAN Award.

About Queen Mary
At Queen Mary University of London, we believe that a diversity of ideas helps us achieve the previously unthinkable.

Throughout our history, we’ve fostered social justice and improved lives through academic excellence. And we continue to live and breathe this spirit today, not because it’s simply ‘the right thing to do’ but for what it helps us achieve and the intellectual brilliance it delivers.

We continue to embrace diversity of thought and opinion in everything we do, in the belief that when views collide, disciplines interact, and perspectives intersect, truly original thought takes form.

Benefits
We offer competitive salaries, access to a generous pension scheme, 30 days’ leave per annum (pro-rata for part-time/fixed-term), a season ticket loan scheme and access to a comprehensive range of personal and professional development opportunities. In addition, we offer a range of work life balance and family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, and campus facilities.

Queen Mary’s commitment to our diverse and inclusive community is embedded in our appointments processes. Reasonable adjustments will be made at each stage of the recruitment process for any candidate with a disability. We are open to considering applications from candidates wishing to work flexibly.

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