Duties

Research

• You carry out research in the field of applied linguistics, in at least one of the following domains, with a focus on French: multilingualism, written language skills or text analysis.

• You use state-of-the-art quantitative and/or qualitative techniques for applied linguistic research in your research.

• You take initiatives to acquire competitive funding and actively participate in the development of future (interdisciplinary) research projects.

• Besides a strong applied linguistic profile, you develop cross-disciplinary research lines and collaborations with scientific fields in which the analysis of multilingualism and multilingual communication also play a central role, such as translation and interpretation science, psycholinguistics, communication science or Digital Humanities.

• You will join the research group in the Department of Linguistics with which your research shows the strongest affinity. At the same time, you support and develop initiatives that build the bridge between your own research and the other scientific domains mentioned above, within and outside the Faculty of Arts (e.g. through active membership in the Centre for Applied Language Research, the Leuven Institute for Artificial Intelligence or initiatives relating to Digital Humanities).

Education

You will provide a teaching assignment in the Bachelor’s in Applied Linguistics (“Bachelor Toegepaste taalkunde”, KU Leuven – Antwerp Campus) and in the Master’s in Multilingual Communication (“Master Meertalige communicatie”, KU Leuven – Antwerp Campus), and possibly one course in the Master’s in Multilingual Communication in Brussels, with a clear commitment to the quality of the programmes as a whole, and in line with KU Leuven’s educational vision. Your teaching assignment will initially mainly be linked to the Antwerp Campus, but you are willing to provide future teaching assignments on other campuses of the faculty, and in teaching programmes related to the above-mentioned programmes, where deemed convenient.

The following course units are indicatively part of the teaching assignment of the sought candidate:

Master Multilingual Communication

• Cases in multilingual communication: French (taught in French; 6 ECTS)

• Digital text design: French (taught in French; 3 ECTS)

• Multimodal text design: French (taught in French; 3 ECTS)

• Research methodology (taught in Dutch, 4.5 out of 9 ECTS)

OR Advanced research methods (taught in English, 4.5 out of 9 ECTS) on Campus Brussels)

Bachelor Applied Linguistics

• French language proficiency 2 (probably from 2024-2025) (taught in French; 2 out of 10 ECTS, i.c.w. a teaching assistant)

• French text analysis and production (probably from 2025-2026) (taught in French; 4 ECTS)

You will also further contribute to the Faculty’s pedagogical project by supervising bachelor’s and master’s theses in the above-mentioned courses and participating in initiatives for the training of young researchers in your area of expertise (e.g. as part of the compulsory doctoral training).

You develop your teaching approach, taking advantage of the opportunities for educational professionalisation offered by the faculty and the university.

Service

• Within the institution, you have an active presence on the Antwerp Campus of the Faculty of Arts.

• You contribute to the further development of the multilingualism and multilingual communication component at the KU Leuven Campus Antwerp, in interaction with the wider region. You represent us in the region and act as a contact person between the university and local bodies where appropriate.

• You are willing to provide academic, social and internal service. You actively work on forms of regional and international cooperation with actors in your field to strengthen the links between the programmes and the field. You participate in information and recruitment events and extra-muros activities.

• In time, you will also take up management tasks on campus and in the Faculty.

Profile

• You have a PhD in (applied) linguistics (or equivalent relevant degree) with a specialisation in French and with a specific focus on multilingualism, written language skills or text analysis.

• Your profile as a researcher with expertise in quantitative and/or qualitative linguistic analysis techniques complements the existing research focus of the Department of Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts.

• You possess excellent didactic qualities for academic teaching and can present an excellent research dossier. Research quality is reflected in several high-level international publications.

• You have organisational skills and a collaborative attitude.

The teaching curriculum for this position also consists of Dutch-language course units. The administrative language of KU Leuven is Dutch. If you have no or insufficient Dutch at the time of recruitment, KU Leuven provides a training offer that should allow you to participate in board meetings. Before teaching in Dutch, you will be given the opportunity to acquire the knowledge of Dutch required for this purpose.

Offer

We offer full-time employment in an intellectually challenging environment. You will be appointed as a tenure-track lecturer for a period of 5 years; thereafter, upon positive evaluation, you will be appointed as a senior lecturer. To facilitate scientific integration and research in the first period, start-up funding of 110,000 euro is offered to new professors who do not have substantial other funding.

KU Leuven is a research-intensive, internationally oriented university conducting both fundamental and applied scientific research. It has a strong inter- and multidisciplinary focus and strives for international excellence. To this end, it actively cooperates with its research partners at home and abroad. It offers its students an academic education based on high-level scientific research.

KU Leuven is well equipped to welcome foreign professors and their families and provides practical support in the areas of immigration and administration, housing, childcare, learning Dutch, partner career coaching, etc.

KU Leuven aims to create an environment in which all talents can develop to their maximum potential, regardless of gender, age, cultural origin, nationality or disability. If you have any questions regarding accessibility or support opportunities, please contact us at diversiteit.HR@kuleuven.be.

Interested?

More information can be obtained from prof. dr. Elke Peters, campus dean of the Antwerp Campus of KU Leuven (Faculty of Arts), elke.peters@kuleuven.be; from prof. dr. Karen Lahousse, coordinator of the Department of Linguistics (Faculty of Arts), karen.lahousse@kuleuven.be and from the dean of the Faculty, prof. dr. Liesbet Heyvaert, liesbet.heyvaert@kuleuven.be.

For problems with online applying, please contact solliciteren@kuleuven.be.

Please enclose with your application a detailed research proposal for a period of 3 years (maximum two pages) and a vision statement on teaching (maximum two pages) in Dutch or in English.

You can apply for this job no later than February 13, 2023 via the  online application tool 

KU Leuven seeks to foster an environment where all talents can flourish, regardless of gender, age, cultural background, nationality or impairments. If you have any questions relating to accessibility or support, please contact us at diversiteit.HR@kuleuven.be.

Specifically, the candidate will address the development of digital humanities methods in the following ways:
– Research the development of a NLP toolchain in literary research with enhanced multilingual workflows;
– Develop with a team of researchers a suite of workflows and prototypes to facilitate common research tasks within literary studies using NLP enrichments; this includes: named entity recognition, relational extraction, and sentiment analysis;
– Work to optimise the availability of fundamental NLP tools within a workflow for historical literary texts using case studies from KBR (the Royal Library of Belgium) multilingual serial publication collection.

For more information and how to apply, please visit the application link provided below.

Web Address for Applications: https://www.ugent.be/en/work/scientific/doctoral-fellow-13

Contact Information:
Assistant Professor Julie M Birkholz
julie.birkholz@ugent.be

Degree requirements:
PhD in (corpus) Linguistics

The candidates are expected to have a solid background in quantitative corpus linguistics, and more specifically in distributional (vector space) semantics. Excellent skills in R (and preferably also in Python) are required.

We are looking for independent researchers with management / coordination skills, who are able to share their knowledge with PhD students within a large interdisciplinary consortium.

Candidates should have an excellent knowledge of English.

Ghent University offers a one-year full-time contract starting on 1 March 2021. Successful candidates will be employed as research staff member under the regime of international mobility (with regular health insurance, etc.). Information for incoming international staff can be found at https://www.ugent.be/en/work/talent/next-steps.

Contact one of the project supervisors for more information. More information about the project and its supervisors can be found at www.languageproductivity.ugent.be

Supervisors:
Peter Lauwers (PI), Jóhanna Barðdal, Timothy Colleman, Renata Enghels, Rob Hartsuiker, Miriam Taverniers.
Co-supervisors: Ludovic De Cuypere, Alice Foucart, Anne-Sophie Ghyselen.

The deadline for applications is 7 February 2021.

Applications should be submitted to the application email provided below and should consist of:

• A detailed CV, including degree grades and title of Master Thesis and PhD Thesis, and
• A letter of motivation in English, which should also mention specific skills in quantitative corpus linguistics

Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed shortly after the 14th of February.

Application Deadline: 07-Feb-2021

Email Address for Applications: languageproductivity@ugent.be
Contact Information:
Prof Peter Lauwers
Email: peter.lauwers@ugent.be

Overview

The candidate is a native Standard Turkish speaker with a training in linguistics and phonetics. He/she will be part of a team that designs, develops, tests, and deploys Text-To-Speech technologies supporting a range of products and services in a large portfolio of languages. With other members of the team, he/she will participate in the development of a new Standard Turkish voice that will help a large number of people around the world.

Job description

• Assist computer scientists in the development of a new Standard Turkish voice

• Assist computer scientists in the validation of the current Standard Turkish Text-to-Speech system

• Checking audio recordings versus text script (word mistakes, erroneous pronunciations…)

• Validate phonetic lexicons

• Phonetic validation of audio recordings

• Native Standard Turkish speaker

• Fluent in English or French to communicate with the team

• Curiosity about phonetics and languages

• Working knowledge of Windows or Linux

• Team player with good interpersonal skills

Duration

9 months

Location

In Mons (Belgium), possibility to work partly from home

Type of contract

Fixed-term contract as an employee of Acapela (or consultancy if preferred)

Start date

March 2020

Contact

Vincent Pagel 

Acapela Group R&D and Linguistic Resources Manager 

linguistic@acapela-group.com 

Address: blvd Dolez, 33 B7000 MONS

About Acapela Group

Acapela Group brings together talented people from very different backgrounds and areas of expertise, resulting in a rich cultural and multilingual environment. We work on voices and languages, we look at the whole world and all application fields to help us create authentic and genuine voices that change or simplify people’s daily lives.

www.acapela-group.com

You have carried out high-quality scientific research in the domain of Spanish linguistics as appears from publications in high-quality scientific journals and/or peer-reviewed books; 
You are able to initiate and guide scientific research and to collect the necessary funds for this; 
You have the necessary didactic knowledge to help university students develop academic skills within the domains of Spanish linguistics and Spanish language proficiency; 
You have demonstrable expertise in academic education in the domains of Spanish linguistics and Spanish language proficiency; 
You have an excellent spoken and written command of Spanish. 

Recommended are: 

International mobility, among other things thanks to research stays at institutions external to the one where you acquired your highest academic degree; 
Experience in writing and acquiring (international) research projects within the domain of Spanish linguistics; 
Positive evaluations of previous academic teaching experiences; 
Professionalization of education 

Skills / Attitude: 

You are quality-oriented; 
You take initiative; 
If you are not a Dutch native speaker and/or have no sufficient command of this language, you are prepared to learn the language; 
You have good organisational, interpersonal and communicative skills; 
You are a team player. 

Admission Requirements: 

You are a thesis-based doctorate holder or you hold a diploma or certificate that is recognised as equivalent (article V.20 Codex Higher Education). 

Upon evaluation of a foreign (non-EU) diploma, a certificate of equivalence may still have to be requested at NARIC. If this is the case, we advise you to initiate this recognition procedure as soon as possible. You are required to have the recognition no later than on the date of your appointment. 

You have at least two years of postdoctoral experience on 1 september 2020. This term of two years is determined by the date written on the above-mentioned required diploma. 

Appointment Information: 

We offer you a temporary appointment in a tenure track system for a term of five years. If positively evaluated by the University Board, the term of office will be transferred into a permanent appointment as an associate professor. 
Should you already be a member of the professorial staff or hold an equal post at another university or research institution, you can immediately be appointed as an assistant professor, without prejudice to the possibility of a temporary appointment offered in article V.28 of the Codex of Higher Education. 

The recruitment is possible no sooner than 1 september 2020. 

Application Deadline: 28-Feb-2020 

Web Address for Applications: https://bit.ly/39iAkqB 
Contact Information:
Professor Renata Enghels 
Email: Renata.Enghels@ugent.be 
Phone: 003292644048 

The PhD project is part of the FNRS-funded project “How do grammar and discourse interact? Answers from subordination, coordination and insubordination”. The candidate’s supervisors will be An Van linden (University of Liège) and Liesbeth Degand (Université catholique de Louvain) in a joint degree programme. 

The goal of this research project is to investigate the grammar-discourse interface and more specifically the question of how speakers bend the language system’s affordances (i.e. grammar) to new uses in discourse. In particular, it will concentrate on patterns of adverbial insubordination (e.g. As if I had nothing else to do!) and aims to move beyond constructional analyses provided for the phenomenon so far by investigating which discourse-interactional conditions facilitate it, and which prosodic features co-signal it. It will be based on spoken corpus samples of at least two of the following three languages: French, Dutch and English. 

Profile: 

– Master in Linguistics, Linguistics and Literature, or Philology (or equivalent), with excellent study results; 
– an excellent command of French and/or Dutch (native or near-native) and a good command of (spoken and written) academic English; 
– familiarity with corpus linguistic methods and tools as well as strong analytical skills and creativity; 
– an interest in authentic corpus data of French, Dutch and English; 
– a passion for linguistics and an international orientation (i.a. for research stays abroad during the doctoral period); 
– the capacity to work independently and as part of a team; 
– the ability to present research results at international conferences, and to publish in English in peer-reviewed journals; 
– previous experience with statistical analysis of corpus data and/or analysis of discourse features and/or prosodic analysis is an asset 

Offer: 

– The candidate will have the opportunity to do doctoral research in the context of the above-mentioned project, during 4 years. 
– The candidate will have 90% of his/her time available for his/her doctoral research activities; 10% will be dedicated to other (administrative) services. 
– The candidate will receive a grant of approximately 1800 EUR/month (including social security). In addition, s/he will be allocated office space and a laptop, and receive funding for research activities like attending conferences abroad. 
– The candidate will take part in the doctoral training programme, as stipulated by the joint degree conventions. 
– starting date: not later than 1 July 2020 

If you are interested, please e-mail your application file to Prof. An Van linden and Prof. Liesbeth Degand (liesbeth.degand@uclouvain.be), including: 

(i) a cover letter describing your motivation, stating why you want to do this research (in English) 
(ii) a detailed CV (in English or French) 
(iii) a list of grades obtained for your Bachelor and Master programmes 
(iv) the names and contact details of two academic referees we may contact prior to appointment 
(v) a sample piece of academic writing (in English, French or Dutch, e.g. a BA- or an MA-paper). 

Interviews will be held with shortlisted candidates in Liège on 13 March 2020 (if needed via Skype for international applicants). 
A decision will be made by 30 March 2020. 

Applications Deadline: 29-Feb-2020 

Mailing Address for Applications:
        Attn: Prof. An Van linden 
        Place Cockerill 3-5 
        Liège 4000 
        Belgium 

Contact Information: 
        Prof. An Van linden 
        an.vanlinden@uliege.be 

The Department of Linguistics at KU Leuven is an internationally oriented center for research and training in linguistics. The department is committed to a wide range of approaches to the study of language(s), with a focus on different research methods, theoretical frameworks and phenomena. Candidates have a profile that complements the existing expertise within the department and that will help to set up interdisciplinary collaboration with other departments and centers within and beyond the Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven. 

Offer: 

We offer a fulltime position in an intellectually inspiring environment. KU Leuven is a research-intensive, internationally oriented university that carries out both fundamental and applied scientific research. It is highly inter- and multidisciplinarily focused and strives for international excellence. In this regard, it actively works together with research partners in Belgium and abroad. It provides its students with an academic education that is based on high-quality scientific research. 

You will work in Leuven, a historic, dynamic and lively city located in the heart of Belgium, within 20 minutes from Brussels, the capital of the European Union, and less than two hours from Paris, London and Amsterdam. 

You will be appointed as assistant professor on the tenure track for a period of 5 years. After this period and a positive evaluation, you are permanently appointed (or tenured) as an associate professor. KU Leuven is well-equipped to welcome foreign professors and their family. The university provides practical support concerning immigration and administration, housing, child care, Dutch courses, career coaching for partners, etc. In order to facilitate scientific integration and research in the first stage of the appointment, a start-up grant of 100.000 Euros is offered to new professors who do not have other substantial research funding. 

Interested? 

A full description of the vacancy can be found at the link below. 

For more information please contact Prof. dr. Geert Brône, tel.: +32 3 502 15 16, mail:geert.bronekuleuven.be. 
For problems with online applying, please contact solliciterenkuleuven.be. 

KU Leuven places great importance on research integrity and ethical conduct and will therefore ask you to sign an integrity statement upon appointment. 

Application Deadline: 28-Feb-2020 

Web Address for Applications: https://www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jobsite/jobs/55501283?hl=en&lang=en 
Contact Information:
Prof. dr. Geert Brône 
Email: geert.brone@kuleuven.be 
Phone: +32 3 502 15 16 

Job description

• Assist computer scientists in the development of a new Brazilian Portuguese voice

• Assist computer scientists in the validation of the current Brazilian Portuguese Text-to-Speech system

• Checking audio recordings versus text script (word mistakes, erroneous pronunciations…)

• Validate phonetic lexicons

• Phonetic validation of audio recordings

• Native Brazilian Portuguese speaker

• Fluent in English or French to communicate with the team

• Curiosity about phonetics and languages

• Working knowledge of Windows or Linux

• Team player with good interpersonal skills

Duration

9 months

Location

In Mons (Belgium), possibility to work partly from home

Type of contract

Fixed-term contract as an employee of Acapela (or consultancy if preferred)

Start date

 As soon as possible

Contact

Vincent Pagel 

Acapela Group R&D and Linguistic Resources Manager 

linguistic@acapela-group.com

Address: blvd Dolez, 33 B7000 MONS

About Acapela Group

Acapela Group brings together talented people from very different backgrounds and areas of expertise, resulting in a rich cultural and multilingual environment. We work on voices and languages, we look at the whole world and all application fields to help us create authentic and genuine voices that change or simplify people’s daily lives.

www.acapela-group.com

Job description

• Assist computer scientists in the development of a new Portuguese voice

• Assist computer scientists in the validation of the current Portuguese Text-to-Speech system

• Checking audio recordings versus text script (word mistakes, erroneous pronunciations…)

• Validate phonetic lexicons

• Phonetic validation of audio recordings

• Native Portuguese speaker

• Fluent in English or French to communicate with the team

• Curiosity about phonetics and languages

• Working knowledge of Windows or Linux

• Team player with good interpersonal skills

Duration

9 months

Location

In Mons (Belgium), possibility to work partly from home

Type of contract

Fixed-term contract as an employee of Acapela (or consultancy if preferred)

Start date

 As soon as possible

Contact

Vincent Pagel 

Acapela Group R&D and Linguistic Resources Manager 

linguistic@acapela-group.com

Address: blvd Dolez, 33 B7000 MONS

About Acapela Group

Acapela Group brings together talented people from very different backgrounds and areas of expertise, resulting in a rich cultural and multilingual environment. We work on voices and languages, we look at the whole world and all application fields to help us create authentic and genuine voices that change or simplify people’s daily lives.

www.acapela-group.com

The successful candidate is appointed for two years. Further funding will be sought for the remainder of the PhD project. The starting date is as soon as possible.

Description of the project:
The study of dialectal microvariation of Spanish spoken in Spain has until recently mainly focused on lexical and phonetic features. The morphosyntax of these dialects, on the contrary, remains largely unexplored, despite the recent surge in interest in dialect grammars. This is due to the lack of large annotated dialectal corpora. This project aims to fill this lacuna and will create the first morphosyntactically annotated and parsed corpus of the European Spanish dialects. This dialect corpus will be designed in a geographically balanced way and its material will proceed from the COSER corpus (Corpus Oral y Sonoro del Español Rural ‘Audible Corpus of Spoken Rural Spanish’; www.corpusrural.es), the largest collection of oral data in the Spanish-speaking world. As transcribing and annotating are expensive and labour-intensive, this project takes a collaborative game-based approach to building the parsed corpus of European Spanish dialects. In other words, a crowdsourced game will be built through which members of the public contribute to the co-creation of the parsed corpus by providing annotations in the
context of a game.

Requirements:

• Master’s degree in a relevant field (Computational Linguistics, Computer Science or Hispanic Linguistics)
• Strong interest in language and speech technology
• Interested in research and having the intention to obtain a PhD degree
• Fluent /(near) native in Spanish and English
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills
• Eager to acquire new competences and knowledge
• Preferably knowledge of programming languages (e.g. Python, Java)
• The candidate should be able to work independently as well as in a
  multidisciplinary team, and will be guided by advisors with a computer science/computational linguistics background (UGent-UHasselt) and with a background in dialectology (UGent).

How to apply:
The application in English should include:

• A motivation letter, summarizing the candidate’s background and
  capabilities, and describing his/her motivation for this position
• Attested copies of education certificates, and a list of master courses with
  the grades obtained
• An extensive CV
• Contact information (e-mail) of potential referees

Applications are to be sent by e-mail to Prof. Dr Veronique Hoste (Veronique.Hoste@UGent.be) and Prof. Dr Miriam Bouzouita (Miriam.Bouzouita@UGent.be).

Application deadline:
August 15th, 2019. Those who have applied previously do not need to resubmit their application.

Contact for more information:
Miriam.Bouzouita@UGent.be