The Goldin-Meadow Laboratory in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago is seeking a postdoctoral researcher beginning summer or fall 2020 (start date is flexible; but summer is preferred).  The postdoctoral researcher will join a team investigating children’s development of language and reasoning from infancy through adolescence.  The Chicago Language Development Project (LDP) is a longitudinal study of language learning and parent-child interaction following 60 typically developing children from infancy through high school. Data collected includes video of parent-child interaction in the home to capture spontaneous, everyday early language environments in the pre-school period and follow-up data on academic progress. A database of over 1 million transcribed utterances and associated language and gesture coding combined with additional measures of math and academic language provide a unique resource for longitudinal analyses.

The postdoctoral researcher will participate in all aspects of research management, development, and implementation. He/she will oversee design of follow-up surveys of longitudinal research participants, participate in the design of the database and research products that are shared with the broader research community, and complete analyses of longitudinal data.  These analyses could include, for example, looking at the stability of linguistic, interactional, or other characteristics over age, investigating the predictive value of early behaviors on later linguistic and cognitive development or transition to postsecondary schooling and workforce entry.

A doctoral degree is required in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, or a related field. The ideal candidate will have a background in corpus research and longitudinal analysis, and adequate computation skills (SQL, Python and/or R) with the ability to expand his/her knowledge through this project.

Interested candidates should submit a CV, a cover letter describing their research interests and career goals, and the names and contact information for two references who can be contacted for letters of recommendation.

Please email these materials to:

Susan Goldin-Meadow (sgsg@uchicago.edu) and Kristi Schonwald (kschonwa@uchicago.edu).

The University of Chicago is an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity / Disabled / Veterans Employer.  Individuals requiring accommodation call 773-834-7573.

We will be searching for a highly creative postdoctoral fellow for the fall of 2020 to work on our NSF-funded project on early fraction learning at the University of Delaware.  This exciting new 4-year project will explore individual differences in first graders’ informal fraction knowledge and how we can build this knowledge to help children profit from formal instruction.   The fellowship provides a unique opportunity to participate on a project that supports the development of excellent scholars in STEM education and cognitive research. We seek recent doctoral graduates in fields such as math education, educational psychology, cognitive science, and developmental psychology.  PI team:  Nancy Jordan, Nora Newcome and Christina Barbieri.

If you are interested, please contact Professor Nancy C. Jordan at njordan@udel.edu

Nancy C. Jordan
Dean Family Endowed Chair of Education & Professor

201D  Willard Hall
16 W. Main St.
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
302-831-4651

The Child Cognition Center at Tsinghua University (PI: Stella Christie) invites applications for several two-year postdoctoral positions. Our research group aims to understand foundational learning mechanisms for knowledge acquisition. Recent and current works include analogical learning in social cognition, cross-cultural investigations on free and guided play, cross-species comparison on rule learning and analogical abstraction. Researchers joining our group are not bound by specific grants/projects, and are free to establish their research agenda and interests within our broad aim of understanding learning.

The postdoctoral position is a joint position under Tsinghua University’s Department of Psychology and Tsinghua Laboratory for Brain and Intelligence (THBI). THBI is a new, interdisciplinary research institute that brings together researchers from developmental science, computer science and machine learning, behavioral and computational neuroscience, and other related fields. As such, postdoctoral fellows joining our group have great opportunities to interact and collaborate with people from other disciplines. Fellows also have direct access to THBI-owned research facilities such as the 150 m2 (1600 square ft) developmental laboratory and 3000 m2 (32000 square ft) animal facility housing common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus).

Postdoctoral fellows receive salaries and benefits packages that are internationally competitive. Fellows are eligible for a rent-subsidized on-campus apartment. There are ample funds for academic travel and participation in academic activities.

Tsinghua University is routinely ranked number 1 among Chinese universities and in the top 5 in Asia, offering a vibrant research and academic community. The university is located in the northwest of Beijing, which houses several top universities and is a major hub of China’s robust high-tech industry. At the same time, the university offers proximity to nature: it is surrounded by large historical parks and situated only one hour away from the Taihang mountain range.

Applicants should send a CV, a statement of research interests, and contact details for 3 referees (who will be contacted for short-listed candidates) in one PDF document. Include a link to, or attach, up to 3 representative publications or manuscripts. Application materials should be sent to christie@tsinghua.edu.cn; please put Postdoc 2020 Application in the subject line of your email.  Review of applications is ongoing and will continue until positions are filled. For more information on THBI, please visit brain.tsinghua.edu.cn/column/english.

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Stella Christie

The Psychology of Language research group at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen has two positions currently open:

A three-year postdoc position working together with the PI (Nivedita Mani) developing projects related to children’s early word learning. The candidate will be expected to teach courses on Research skills in Psychology and Cognitive Psychology to undergraduate students in Psychology and Biology in German (Deadline: 8.6.2020: More details here:http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/305402.html?cid=14960).

A three-year PhD position in the “Understanding social relationships” Research Training Group examining the extent to which infants selectively attend to different kinds of language input and how such selective attention impacts succesful language learning (Deadline: 30.5.2020: More details here:http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/305402.html?cid=14953). 

Post-Doc in Empirical School- and Classroom Research at Leipzig University

The chair for Empirical School and Classroom Research at Leipzig University is offering a three-year full-time postdoc position. Our team investigates classroom management, teacher attitudes and professional vision using psychological and behavioral research methods. We are a young research group and a successful candidate would have the opportunity to shape our research agenda, as well as the freedom to acquire or contribute new methods. Due to the teaching duties and the organization of data collection, a successful candidate would have to be fluent in German.

Full job description in German can be found here (https://tinyurl.com/y9yxn2r2 ) and I’m happy to answer questions anytime (gregor.kachel@uni-leipzig.de)

Best,

Gregor Kachel

We invite indications of interest for nine two-year postdoctoral positions with expertise in language acquisition, morpho-syntax and semantics to carry out large-scale, crosslinguistic child language research. The positions are within the “LeibnizDream” (leibnizdream.eu) project, approved by the European Research Council in the Synergy Grant 2019 call. The core research team of LeibnizDream will be based at three host institutions. The openings are distributed over the host institutions, PIs, and research profiles as follows:
 
at UniMiB (“Acquirer Group”, PI Maria Teresa Guasti):
 
three post-doctoral positions with main expertise in language acquisition, desired assets: eye tracking, statistics / data science, language-comparative experience, theoretical linguistics
 
at HU (“Compressor Group”, PI Artemis Alexiadou):
 
three positions with main expertise in morphology, desired assets: cross-linguistic morphology, morphological acquisition, computational morphology, syntax, semantics, experimental methods
 
at ZAS (“Generator Group”, PI Uli Sauerland):
 
three positions with main expertise in semantics, desired assets: cross-linguistic semantics, syntax/semantics interface, semantic acquisition, morpho-semantics, experimental methods
 
All positions are to start between January 1st, 2021 or soon after. All contracts will be until the end of 2022, but they may be extended for up to four more years in the case of outstanding accomplishments. The salary at HU and ZAS will be according to E13 of the TVL or the TVOeD pay-scale respectively, and also competitive at UniMiB.
 
The duty of the positions is to carry out research as described by the project application. The plan is to carry out comparative experiments in language acquisition across up to 50 different languages in collaboration with partners across the globe. We target six different areas of morpho-syntax/semantics, 1) the expression of causation and agency, and 2)
of motion events, 3) the binary connectives, 4) negative concepts such as exclusion, antonyms, and negation, 5) quantificational concepts including genericity and distributivity, and 6) dependencies most frequently analyzed as variable binding (wh-questions, relative clauses, degree clauses). The postdocs will work in small teams across these domains to prepare, carry out experiments, oversee the process of data collection, and then analyse and publish acquisition studies in these domains. Intensive interaction with the collaborators from different countries will be part of the research. The project aims for cultural diversity and gender balance of its staff. The project furthermore seeks to implement the principles of open science.
 
An expression of interest must be submitted via electronic mail (subject should include: “LeibnizDream”) and include the following (1, 2 and 3 in PDF format, ideally in one PDF file): 1) a letter of intent specifying research experience and intended contributions to the project, as well as the starting date; 2) the curriculum vitae including a complete list of publications; 3) electronic copies of up to three representative writings; and 4) the names and email addresses of at least two scholars to be contacted for letters of recommendation. Interested researchers wishing for secure communication with PGP can contact us for the necessary encryption key. Please note that the positions are still subject to availability of funding and a hiring procedure in compliance with institutional requirements will still be advertised.
 
Application deadline: May 1st, 2020
Email for applications: Sofia Rustioni <s.rustioni3@campus.unimib.it>
<s.rustioni3@campus.unimib.it>
 
Please write: Leibnizdream in the object

The Developmental Social Cognitive Neuroscience lab (directed by Elizabeth Redcay: www.dscn.umd.edu) at the University of Maryland is inviting applications for a postdoctoral associate. This position is supported by an NIMH-funded grant investigating how brain network organization contributes to atypical social interaction in autism spectrum disorder. Research in the lab is focused on understanding the role of social-cognitive and motivational systems on the typical and atypical development of social interaction. We use functional and structural MRI methods, including task-based activation and functional connectivity methods during task and rest. 

The ideal candidate will have a Ph.D. in cognitive, clinical, or developmental neuroscience, or related field, and significant expertise with advanced analytical approaches, including advanced statistical approaches and functional MRI methods and analyses (functional connectivity and graph theory methods are a plus). Prior background in social neuroscience, developmental cognitive neuroscience, or autism research is also a plus but not required.

This is an excellent position for qualified candidates to 1) gain expertise in high-priority research fields including autism and developmental neuroscience, and 2) advance methodological expertise through collaborations between the DSCN lab and the Laboratory of Cognition & Emotion (directed by Luiz Pessoa: www.lce.umd.edu). Further, the postdoc would be part of a supportive lab environment that prioritizes professional development, including publications and grant-writing experience. Finally, UMD is an ideal location to connect with and learn from diverse researchers both within UMD (e.g., Neuroscience and Cognitive Science program, Maryland Neuroimaging Center) and locally (e.g., NIH, UMD-Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, George Washington, Children’s Hospital, Georgetown). UMD is located in College Park, MD, just 5 miles from the vibrant and exciting city of Washington DC.

The position is open immediately but start dates into Fall 2020 will also be considered. This is a one-year position renewable contingent on performance and funding. 

Interested applicants should send a CV, statement of research experiences and goals, and contact details for three references to Elizabeth Redcay at redcay@umd.edu. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled. The University of Maryland is an equal opportunity affirmative action employer with a commitment to racial, cultural, and gender diversity.  Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

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