The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam is looking for an exceptional postdoctoral researcher in the area of Computations and Semantics within the ERC StG project 'Cognitive Semantics and Quantities [CoSaQ]', running 2017-2021, and led by Principal Investigator (PI) Jakub Szymanik.

You will be employed full-time. The aim of this subproject is to focus on cognitive and computational modeling of quantification. Your main task will be contributing to learnability and evolution approach to quantification that has been recently developed in the group. You will be also expecting to contribute to other ongoing research in the group, for instance, cognitive modeling of the experimental data on subjects using multiple different strategies in different proportions in different contexts while verifying quantifier sentences. Please see the project website for more details, including recently published papers reporting on the mentioned research lines.

You will be expected to:

• present intermediate research results at international workshops and conferences;
• deliver excellent publications in cooperation with the PI and the other project members;
• help with the organizational tasks connected to the project, including the organization and attendance of CoSaQ project seminars and organization of CoSaQ workshops.

You should have:

• a PhD in the area of Computer Science, AI, Logic, Linguistics, or Cognitive Science with demonstrable expertise in semantics and computational modeling;
• evidence that you publish regularly in top journals in the area of cognitive science, linguistics, or AI;
• strong willingness to help with all the organizational duties connected to the project;
• strong cooperative attitude and willingness to engage in collaborative research.

Fixed-term contract: One year.

You will be appointed for 38 hours per week (1,0 FTE) for a period of 12 months at the Department of Literary Studies and Linguistics of the Faculty of Humanities. The research will be carried out under the aegis of ILLC. The intended starting date of the contract is 1 April 2020, but slight delays may be negotiated. The gross monthly salary (on full-time basis) will range from €3,389 to €4,018 depending on experience and qualifications, in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities.

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 Humanities – Institute for Logic, Language and Computation

The result of a merger between the Faculties of Arts, Philosophy and Theology in 1997, the Faculty of Humanities not only houses an assortment of established and respected disciplines, including Foreign Languages, Dutch Studies, History, Archaeology, Theatre Studies and Philosophy, but also such pioneering research fields as New Media, Digital Humanities, and Conservation and Restoration.

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) is a renowned research institute, in which researchers from the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Science collaborate. The research carried out at Humanities forms one of the six research schools within this faculty. ILLC’s 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 processing, such as logic, philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science.