PhD Position: Network Neuroscience of Language at the Donders Centre for Cognition

1. Introduction

Join the ERC project EMERGENCE and explore how language arises from large‑scale brain networks. Work with cutting‑edge neuroimaging, advanced connectomics and an international research community to uncover the neurobiology of human language.

2. Job description

The ERC project investigates language as an emergent property of distributed brain networks, integrating white-matter connectivity, functional neuroimaging and individual variability. Moving beyond classical localisationist accounts, the project aims to understand how language functions arise from large-scale network organisation and how these networks differ across individuals.

You will join the ERC Consolidator project EMERGENCE, which investigates how language networks arise from multi-scale neurobiological variability. The project combines multimodal neuroimaging (structural MRI, diffusion-weighted imaging, functional MRI), advanced connectomics, and receptor-enriched modelling to characterise individual differences in language organisation across healthy participants and clinical populations (e.g. stroke, brain tumour and neurodegenerative conditions). You will contribute to data preprocessing, and advanced analysis, including tractography, network modelling and computational approaches to identify latent dimensions of language network organisation.

You will be embedded within the Donders Graduate School and will also participate in the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Language Sciences. This provides access to a structured and interdisciplinary training curriculum, advanced methodological courses, transferable skills workshops, and a vibrant international doctoral community. Within this framework, you will develop and implement reproducible analysis pipelines, contribute to hypothesis generation, collaborate across institutes, and disseminate findings through publications and international conferences.

Your teaching tasks are limited and integrated into the training trajectory, typically amounting to approximately 10% of your working time. These may include supervising Bachelor’s or Master’s theses, assisting in practical courses or tutorials and contributing to guest lectures within relevant programmes at Radboud University.

You will be supervised by Dr Stephanie Forkel (PI) and co-supervised by senior researchers affiliated with the Donders Institute at Radboud University and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

More information about pursuing a PhD at Radboud University can be found here: working as a PhD candidate.

3. Profile

We are looking for a highly motivated and analytically minded candidate with a strong interest in brain connectivity, quantitative methods and language or cognition.

Essential qualifications

• You have a completed Master’s degree in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, computational linguistics, biomedical engineering, data science or a related discipline.
• You have strong quantitative or analytical skills, or a clear motivation to develop them further.
• You have experience in neuroimaging and brain network analysis.
• You have programming or data-analysis experience (e.g. FSL, Python, MATLAB, R).
• You have an excellent command of spoken and written English.

Desirable qualifications

• You have prior experience with MRI or neuroimaging data.
• You have experience with Python-based scientific computing.
• You have familiarity with multivariate methods, network analysis or machine learning.
• You have interest in language, cognition, and individual variability in brain organisation. 

4. We are

The Clinical Neuroanatomy of Language group at the Donders Centre for Cognition investigates how language emerges from the organisation of large-scale brain networks in the healthy human brain. Led by Dr Stephanie Forkel, the group combines advanced neuroimaging, white-matter tractography, functional MRI and rich behavioural profiling to understand individual variability in language, speech and communication.

Our research is strongly grounded in fundamental neuroscience and focuses on building mechanistic, network-level models of language based on healthy brain data, while using clinical populations as complementary test cases rather than the primary focus. PhD students in the group work with state-of-the-art methods, open and reproducible pipelines and large multimodal datasets, and are encouraged to develop their own ideas at the interface of brain structure, function and behaviour.

The Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour is a world-class interfaculty research centre that houses more than 700 researchers devoted to understanding the mechanistic underpinnings of the human mind. Research at the Donders Institute is focused around four themes: 1. Language and communication, 2. Perception, action and decision-making, 3. Development and lifelong plasticity, 4. Natural computing and neurotechnology. Excellent, state-of-the-art research facilities are available for the broad range of neuroscience research that is being conducted at the Donders Institute. The Donders Institute has been assessed by an international evaluation committee as ‘excellent’ and recognised as a ‘very stimulating environment for top researchers, as well as for young talent’. The Donders Institute fosters a collaborative, multidisciplinary and supportive research environment with a diverse international staff. English is the lingua franca at the Institute.

5. We offer

• We will give you a temporary employment contract (1.0 FTE) of 1.5 years, after which your performance will be evaluated. If the evaluation is positive, your contract will be extended by 2.5 years (4-year contract).
• You will receive a starting salary of €3,059 gross per month based on a 38-hour working week, which will increase to €3,881 in the fourth year (salary scale P).
• You will receive an 8% holiday allowance and an 8,3% end-of-year bonus.
• You will receive extra days off. With full-time employment, you can choose between 30 or 41 days of annual leave instead of the statutory 20.

6. Practical information and applying

You can apply only via the button below. Address your letter of application to Stephanie Forkel. In the application form, you will find which documents you need to include with your application. We look forward to receiving your application.

The first interviews will take place on Tuesday 14 April. Any second interview will take place on Wednesday 22 April. You will preferably start your employment on 1 June 2026.

We can imagine you're curious about our application procedure. It describes what you can expect during the application procedure and how we handle your personal data and internal and external candidates.