Postdoc Position: CMT Patients’ Use of Audiovisual Information While Listening

Join an international research project exploring how Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease affects listening in real-life conversations. As a postdoctoral researcher at Radboud University, you will study audiovisual speech perception, collaborate with global partners, and contribute to advancing knowledge with societal impact.

We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher for the NWO Open Competition M project ’Hidden Hearing and Speech Deficits in Patients with Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease’. Hearing ability is indispensable in our society. For patients with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (nerve disease in the peripheral nerves), this skill is less obvious. They appear to be less able to hear the order of speech sounds and pitch and to understand clearly spoken sentences with background noise. It is unclear whether listeners with CMT also have more difficulty listening to natural conversation when they can not only hear but also see the speaker.

The project is part of an international consortium of Radboud University, Amsterdam UMC, University of Massachusetts Amherst (USA) and the University of Melbourne (Australia). You will work at Radboud University. Within this subproject, you will study to what extent (and how and why) CMT affects listening to spontaneous conversations in an audiovisual context.

You will be involved in designing, conducting, analysing and disseminating the research. The research will be conducted partly at the BSI lab and partly at patients’ homes, with facilities for various research methods (including spatialised listening and phoneme discrimination).

The research focuses on adolescents and adults with CMT. You will formulate research questions and devise an appropriate method. You will analyse complex data, present the results at conferences, and publish in peer-reviewed journals. You will also be an active member of the BSI in Nijmegen.

• We will give you a temporary employment contract of 1 year.
• Your salary within salary scale 11 depends on your previous education and number of years of (relevant) work experience. The amounts in the scale are based on a 38-hour working week.
• You will receive an 8% holiday allowance and an 8,3% end-of-year bonus.
• We offer Dual Career Coaching. The Dual Career Coaching assists your partner via support, tools, and resources to improve their chances of independently finding employment in the Netherlands.
• You will receive extra days off. With full-time employment, you can choose between 30 or 41 days of annual leave instead of the statutory 20.

Additional employment conditions
Work and science require good employment practices. This is reflected in Radboud University's primary and secondary employment conditions. You can make arrangements for the best possible work-life balance with flexible working hours, various leave arrangements and working from home. You are also able to compose part of your employment conditions yourself, for example, exchange income for extra leave days and receive a reimbursement for your sports subscription. And of course, we offer a good pension plan. You are given plenty of room and responsibility to develop your talents and realise your ambitions. Therefore, we provide various training and development schemes.

Faculty of Social Sciences
At the Faculty of Social Sciences, humanity and society are our focus; we study how people behave, think and feel. Within this context, we look at themes such as human behaviour and the human psyche, education and upbringing, communication, society and culture. The faculty provides education to 6,000 students and employs 700 staff. Education is organised into six programme clusters: Psychology; Artificial Intelligence; Pedagogical Sciences and Educational Sciences; Communication Science; Sociology; and Cultural Anthropology and Developmental Sociology, and the Radboud Centre Social Sciences as an institute for post-master education have been merged into the Social Sciences Education Institute. Our research is carried out within three research institutes: the Donders Centre for Cognition, the Behavioural Science Institute, and Radboud Social Cultural Research.

Radboud University
At Radboud University, we aim to make an impact through our work. We achieve this by conducting groundbreaking research, providing high-quality education, offering excellent support, and fostering collaborations within and outside the university. In doing so, we contribute indispensably to a healthy, free world with equal opportunities for all. To accomplish this, we need even more colleagues who, based on their expertise, are willing to search for answers. We advocate for an inclusive community and welcome employees with diverse backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives. Will you also contribute to making the world a little better? You have a part to play.

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You will be based at the Behavioural Science Institute (BSI), where you will work within the framework of the Learning, Education, & Development research programme. Within this programme, researchers conduct fundamental and applied research into individual differences in learning and development among children, teenagers and adolescents.

The Behavioural Science Institute (BSI) is an interdisciplinary research institute where fundamental, applied and translational research takes place with the aim of understanding important societal issues and contributing to their solutions. BSI is one of three research institutes of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Radboud University. Our researchers collaborate across the boundaries of psychology, communication science and pedagogical and educational science. Our mission for the upcoming years is to join forces in interdisciplinary research on the theme ’Empowering the Young’. We study the challenges that young people face in our current society and contribute to their empowerment.

BSI performs high-quality research with scientific and societal impact. To foster this, the institute provides excellent research facilities and has strong collaborations with non-academic partners. Moreover, BSI is known for its successful graduate school and strong dedication to open science and team science. We stand for a warm, inclusive and cooperative research environment in which our employees are well-supported in a work culture that promotes collaboration and respect.