Postdoctoral Research Associate/Research Assistant - Grade 6/7 (Depending on Experience and Qualifications)

We are looking to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Associate (or an experienced Research Assistant) to join a new ESRC-funded project on early language acquisition, based in the Department of Psychology at the University of Liverpool. This position focuses on the computational modelling side of the project. You will work on extending an existing model of noun and verb acquisition (Brusini et al., 2021), originally developed for French, to other languages. This will involve working with large-scale naturalistic language corpora (e.g. CHILDES) and adapting and refining the model to make it more generalisable and cognitively plausible.

The project aims to understand how children build grammatical categories (such as nouns and verbs) from early language input, and the computational work will closely interact with parallel experimental work (EEG, eye-tracking, pupillometry) conducted within the same project.

What we are looking for; we are particularly interested in candidates with a background in: computational linguistics / NLP cognitive science / psycholinguistics language acquisition or related fields Strong Python skills are essential, and experience working with corpus data or computational models of language would be a major advantage.

You will work closely with an experimental postdoc, so an interest in linking modelling and empirical data is important. This post is fixed term for 2 years.

This is a great opportunity for someone interested in combining computational modelling with questions about human language development in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment.

If you are still awaiting your PhD to be awarded you will be appointed at Grade 6, spine point 30. Upon written confirmation that you have been awarded your PhD, your salary will be increased to Grade 7, spine point 31.

Commitment to Diversity

The University of Liverpool is committed to enhancing workforce diversity. We actively seek to attract, develop, and retain colleagues with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. We welcome applications from all genders/gender identities, Black, Asian, or Minority Ethnic backgrounds, individuals living with a disability, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

For full details and to apply online, please visit: recruit.liverpool.ac.uk

Advert information