Postdoctoral position: Phylodynamics of Language Evolution 1047 views

The Transmission, Infection, Diversification & Evolution Group (tide) led by Denise Kühnert is offering a Postdoctoral position for its project: The “phylodynamics” of language evolution.

About the project:

• The initial aim of this interdisciplinary project is to develop, test and employ mathematical concepts to describe the tree-generating processes appropriate for language evolution.
• They will be based on birth-death processes, which are suitable to model language evolution as they can incorporate periods of constant growth or decline, stagnation, but also bursts and extinction events.
• This project will be performed in close collaboration with the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, led by Professor Dr. Russell Gray.

Role and responsibilities:

• Development of birth-death process based methods for the reconstruction of language phylogenies in a Bayesian framework.
• Analysis of language families, such as the Austronesian and Austroasiatic language families, to test hypotheses about their origins and historic development.
• Test dependence of language diversification on demographic dynamics and potential links to ancient infectious disease outbreaks.

Qualifications:

• Applicant must have obtained or are about to obtain a PhD degree in Linguistics or a quantitative discipline such as Computational Biology, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Physics.
• Interest in language evolution
• Experience with phylogenetic methods
• Experience in programming
• Proficient English skills

Application:

Apply online and upload the following:

• Cover letter (explaining research experience and reason for interest in this project)
• CV
• List of publications
• Copies of certificates
• Names and contact information (email and phone) for up to three referees.