1 PhD position for Idiomatic Second Language Acquisition (ISLA) Comprehension in Netherlands | Radboud University

The PhD project is being hosted by two research institutes: the Donders Centre for Cognition (DCC) in the Faculty of Social Sciences, and the Centre for Language studies (CLS) in the Faculty of Arts. The project is part of a research programme investigating the processing of formulaic expressions (FEs). The project’s aim is to longitudinally study the comprehension of FEs by L2 learners as a function of training/exposure, FE transparency, mutual information, and frequency.

On-line experiments, involving behavioural and electrophysiological measures, will be repeatedly conducted in different phases of FE training. Links to issues in monolingual and bilingual sentence processing (e.g. predictive processing) will be forged. FE training will take place by means of a Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) system and is topic of a different project within the programme.

Requirements

Preference will be given to candidates with an MA degree in cognitive neuroscience, psycholinguistics, linguistics, or other language-related fields, who are highly motivated to conduct cognitive research. Candidates must be interested in studying monolingual and bilingual sentence processing in relation to second language acquisition.

Candidates should have excellent analytic and statistical/methodological skills, experience in experimental cognitive-psychological research (ideally within psycholinguistics). Experience with electrophysiological research techniques and/or eye-tracking is commendable.

Because of the German-Dutch population of experimental participants, it is desirable that the candidate is reasonably fluent in both Dutch and German. Because the results of research will be presented at international conferences and published in high-impact international journals, the candidate should also have an excellent command of written and spoken English.

Conditions of employment

• you will be appointed as a PhD student for an initial period of 18 months, after which your performance will be evaluated. If the evaluation is positive, the contract will be extended by 2.5 years;
• you will be classified as a PhD student (promovendus) in the Dutch university job-ranking system (UFO);
• please note that all PhD students at the Donders Centre for Cognition have a 0,9 fte research and a 0,1 fte teaching appointment.
• you will be part of the Donders Graduate School for Cognitive Neuroscience
• the starting salary is €2,083 per month on a full-time basis, the salary will increase to €2,664 per month in the fourth year;

Organisation

Radboud University Nijmegen

Strategically located in Europe, Radboud University Nijmegen is one of the leading academic communities in the Netherlands. A place with a personal touch, where top-flight education and research take place on a beautiful green campus in modern buildings with state-of-art facilities.

Department

Faculty of Social Sciences

The Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour consists of three research centres: the Centre for Cognition, the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging and the Centre for Neuroscience. The Donders Institute focuses on state-of-the-art cognitive neuroscience, in a multidisciplinary approach, and offers excellent lab and neuroimaging facilities. The project is embedded within the Donders research theme ‘Language and Communication’ and will be supervised by Prof. A. Dijkstra (DCC) and Dr H. Strik (CLS).

The Donders Institute is an equal opportunity employer, committed to building a culturally diverse intellectual community, and encourages applications from women and minorities. The Radboud University offers a parental leave scheme and on-campus day care.

Additional information

Dr. Helmer Strik

+3124 3616104

w.strik@let.ru.nl