Are you a high potential young researcher with a PhD degree in Logic, Linguistics, Philosophy, Computational Linguistics, or a related discipline, and would you be interested to join the Logic and Language programme at our institute to investigate Linguistic Interpretation as Abduction? If so, we invite you to apply for this position.

This postdoc position is part of the NWO Open Competition project 'A Sentence Uttered Makes a World Appear---Natural Language Interpretation as Abductive Model Generation'. The successful applicant will join the group of Reinhard Muskens. The aim of the project is to explore how semantic values are assigned to natural language expressions in a compositional way and how the resulting values, represented as logical expressions, are subsequently enriched by means of abductive reasoning. The latter is studied in a tableaux setting.

What are you going to do?

You will be expected to fulfil the following tasks:

• collaborate with the other researchers working on the project (the PI and two further postdocs, one of whom is to be hired at a later date);
• assist with the supervision of PhD candidates and MSc students;
• regularly present research results at international workshops and conferences, and publish them in conference proceedings and journals;
• participate in and contribute to the organisation of research activities and events at the institute, such as workshops and colloquia;
• while this is primarily a research position, you will have the opportunity to contribute to teaching activities.

What do we require?

You have:

• a PhD degree in Logic, Linguistics, Philosophy, Computational Linguistics, or a related discipline;
• a strong background in Logic and Natural Language Semantics, as witnessed by publications in relevant conference proceedings or journals;
• in-depth knowledge of one of the following areas is a plus: 1) Resolution calculi and tableau calculi for first-order and higher-order logics, 2) Theories of abductive inference, 3) Belief Revision;
• a strong passion for research and the wish to learn new skills through working with or assisting in guiding PhD and MSc students;
• excellent communication skills in English, both oral and written.

Our offer

A temporary contract for 38 hours a week, preferably starting on 1 December 2020 or as soon as possible thereafter. You will be given an initial contract for a probation period of one year. On positive evaluation, your contract will be extended for a further two years.

The salary, depending on relevant experience before the beginning of the employment contract, will be €2,790 to €4,402 (scale 10) gross per month, based on a full-time contract of 38 hours a week. This is exclusive 8 % holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus. A favourable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities is applicable.

Are you curious about our extensive package of secondary employment benefits like our excellent opportunities for study and development? Then find out more about working at the Faculty of Science.

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

Faculty of Science – Institute for Logic, Language and Computation

The Faculty of Science has a student body of around 7,000, as well as 1,600 members of staff working in education, research or support services. Researchers and students at the Faculty of Science are fascinated by every aspect of how the world works, be it elementary particles, the birth of the universe or the functioning of the brain.

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) is an interdisciplinary research institute at the UvA in which researchers from the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Humanities collaborate. Its central research area is the study of fundamental principles of encoding, transmission and comprehension of information. Research at ILLC is interdisciplinary, and aims at bringing together insights from various disciplines concerned with information and information processing, such as logic, mathematics, computer science, linguistics, natural language processing, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, music cognition, and philosophy. ILLC offers an international research environment with world-class faculty in all of its areas of specialization.