PhD student in Computational linguistics, English, Greek, Linguistics or Scandinavian languages within the national graduate school Early languages, digital philology - Hiring in process/Finished, not possible to apply

The Faculty of Languages at Uppsala University is involved in research and education in a large number of languages and language-related subjects. The faculty’s activities cover many of the classical and modern languages and cultures in large areas of Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as computational and general linguistics. The four departments of the faculty accordingly offer a number of stimulating and international study and research environments for students, PhD students and researchers.

Education is offered at the Bachelor, Master and PhD levels. Doctoral studies extend over a 4-year period during which the PhD-student will receive a salary as an employee of the department. Doctoral students are expected to engage in full-time study and research, and contribute to and participate in the department’s activities. Teaching and/or administrative tasks may be involved up to a maximum of 20%, which is carried out against an appropriate prolongation of the contract.

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The national graduate school “Early languages, digital philology” (DigPhil) announces four doctoral positions in one of the following subjects: Computational linguistics, English, Greek (Ancient and Byzantine), Linguistics, or Scandinavian languages. The research school is a national collaboration with Lund University and Stockholm University. In total, ten doctoral students will be employed at the three universities.

The aim of DigPhil is to create a strong and state-of-the-art doctoral research environment in early languages (up to and including the eighteenth century), educating modern philologists who are well aware of the disciplinary traditions but also have solid competence in computational linguistics. The research school broadly defines philology as the integrated study of languages and texts in their historical contexts. Philology continues a tradition founded in the Library of Alexandria in the third century BCE and consists in a dynamic and cross-disciplinary interaction between textual criticism and book history, historical linguistics, various forms of textual analysis (metrics, rhetoric, narratology etc.) and hermeneutics. Digital methods and tools can be developed and applied in all of these areas, e.g. using AI to restore fragmentary texts, making use of computational approaches in comparative historical linguistics, performing automized stylometry or narrative analysis, or reading and extracting facts from texts with data-mining methods. For more information, see https://www.lingfil.uu.se/forskning/digphil.

Requirements
To meet the entry requirements for doctoral studies, you must hold a Master’s (second-cycle) degree in Computational linguistics (Language technology)., English, Greek, Linguistics or Scandinavian languages/Swedish; or have completed at least 240 credits in higher education, with at least 60 credits at Master’s level including an independent project worth at least 15 credits; or have acquired substantially equivalent knowledge in some other way.

Evaluation criteria
The planned doctoral project must fall within the scope of the graduate school – philologically and digitally – and be described in the dissertation plan that should be included in the application (see below). The evaluation of applications will be made on the basis of the four critera of the Swedish Research Council: the scientific quality of the project, originality, the applicant’s competence, and feasibility.

The application should contain:

• A letter of intent containing a short description of the candidate and the subject in which they wish to be accepted: Computational linguistics, English, Greek, Linguistics or Scandinavian languages/Swedish (maximum one page);
• The working language in DigPhil will be English. We therefore ask the applicants to indicate their level of English, preferably by documented level of English proficiency;
• A CV containing (i) a description of your education including a transcript of finished courses and their grades/dates, (ii) a list of any academic publications (if any), and (iii) professional experience relevant to academic research (maximum four pages);
• Degree certificate and/or register extract or equivalent documentation of entry requirements;
• The applicant’s MA thesis (or equivalent). If the submitted thesis is authored in another language than English, the applicant should present an English summary of 3–5 pages;
• A tentative research proposal which (i) states a research question which falls within the project or field described above, (ii) describes the methodology and work plan, and (iii) contextualises the expected results in relation to the state of the art (maximum five pages including references);
• Other documents which the applicant would like to adduce.

We would like the application to be written in English.

Higher Education Ordinance chapter 5, §§ 1-7 and in Uppsala University's rules and guidelines.

About the employment
The employment is a temporary position according to the Higher Education Ordinance chapter 5 § 7. Scope of employment 100 %. Starting date as agreed, but no later than 2024-01-01. Placement: Uppsala

For further information about the position, please contact: Ingela Nilsson, ingela.nilsson@lingfil.uu.se, Beata Megyesi, beata.megyesi@lingfil.uu.se.

Please submit your application by 26th of May 2023 UFV-PA 2023/1304.

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