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.
—————–Quick Overview————- | |
Organization | Max Planck Institute |
Country | Germany |
Fellowship Level | Postdoctoral |
Subject areas |
Linguistics, Computational Biology, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Physics |
Fellowship amount | Varies |
Eligibility | Open to all nationalities |
Deadline | Varies |
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