We are looking for highly motivated candidates to enrich a unique consortium of researchers aiming to unravel the neurocognitive mechanisms of language at multiple levels. The goal is to understand both the universality and variability of the human language faculty from genes to behaviour.
 
Currently, our consortium advertises one postdoctoral position and two PhD positions. These positions provide the opportunity for conducting world-class research as a member of an interdisciplinary team. Each position has its own requirements and profile.

Click here for more information on the positions.

Each position has its own requirements and profile.
More information on: www.languageininteraction.nl/jobs/bqfifth.html
 
General requirements for all positions are:
• a degree in the field indicated;
• strong motivation;
• excellent proficiency in written and spoken English.

• employment: 1.0 FTE
• you will be appointed at one of the consortium's home institutions, depending on the position applied for
• terms of employment depend on the position applied for
• the institutes involved have regulations in place that enable their staff to create a good work life balance.
• you will be able to make use of our Dual Career Service where our Dual Career Officer will assist with family related support, such as child care, and help your partner prepare for the local labour market and with finding an occupation

 
Both institutes involved are equal opportunity employers, committed to building a culturally diverse intellectual community, and as such encourage applications from women and minorities.

Dutch Research Consortium 'Language in Interaction'
The Netherlands has an outstanding track record in the language sciences. The Language in Interaction research consortium, sponsored by a large grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), brings together a large number of the excellent research groups in the Netherlands in one research programme on the foundations of language.
In addition to excellence in the domain of language and related relevant fields of cognition, our consortium provides state-of-the-art research facilities and a research team with ample experience in the complex research methods that will be invoked to address the scientific questions at the highest level of methodological sophistication, including methods from genetics, neuroimaging, computational modelling, and patient-related research. This consortium realises both quality and critical mass for studying human language at a scale not easily found anywhere else.

We have identified five Big Questions (BQ) that are central to our understanding of the human language faculty. These questions are interrelated at multiple levels. Teams of researchers will collaborate to collectively address these key questions in our field.
 
Our five Big Questions are:
BQ1: The nature of the mental lexicon: How to bridge neurobiology and psycholinguistic theory by computational modelling?
BQ2: What are the characteristics and consequences of internal brain organisation for language?
BQ3: Creating a shared cognitive space: How is language grounded in and shaped by communicative settings of interacting people?
BQ4: Variability in language processing and in language learning: Why does the ability to learn language change with age? How can we characterise and map individual language skills in relation to the population distribution?
BQ5: How are other cognitive systems shaped by the presence of a language system in humans?
 
More information on our Big Questions: www.languageininteraction.nl/Bigquestions.html
 
Successful candidates will be appointed at one of the consortium’s home institutions, depending on the position applied for. All successful candidates will become members of our Big Question teams. The research is being conducted at the participating institutions in an international setting. English is the lingua franca.
 
Further information on the Language in Interaction Consortium
Further information on the different positions