PhD Position: Social Interaction and Language Technology

1. Introduction

Are you interested in social interaction and language technology? As a PhD candidate, you will investigate a topic at the intersection of human language and interactive interfaces. You will be able to co-design your own research project as part of a larger team effort to better understand how language and technology shape each other.

2. Job description

The research project is part of the Futures of Language project, in which we study interactive language use as it adapts to major sociotechnical transitions. Questions we ask in the project include: What are the interactional foundations of language? How do current and future language technologies augment or exploit them? The project is interested in global linguistic diversity as a reservoir of humanity’s artisanal technologies of language, and in interactive interfaces as places where language and technology co-evolve. Many current language technologies bear the mark of a legacy that privileges text over talk, information over interaction, and algorithms over agency. In Futures of Language, we aim to understand what happens when we invert those priorities.

As a PhD candidate, you will investigate a topic at the intersection of language and technology. Your research may address questions such as how people carry out social action in interaction with human and non-human others; how pervasive technological mediation (e.g. through live translation) may affect language use and linguistic diversity; or how we can build better evaluation methods for language technology based on insights into human interaction, with room for human judgement and analysis.

We offer you the opportunity to develop and carry out your own PhD project within the areas of expertise of your promotor Mark Dingemanse and the larger Futures of Language team, which includes Dr Marlou Rasenberg and Dr Andreas Liesenfeld. The project is funded by a Vici grant awarded to PI Dingemanse.

As a PhD candidate at the Centre for Language Studies (CLS), you will be part of the Graduate School for the Humanities (GSH). Up to 75% of your time will be devoted to the research for and writing of your PhD thesis. The remaining 25% will be spent on training and academic service to the Faculty of Arts, including teaching.

Would you like to learn more about what it is like to pursue a PhD at Radboud University? Visit the page about working as a PhD candidate. 

3. Profile

• You hold an MA or Research MA degree in Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Communication and Information Sciences, or a related discipline pursuing empirical research on social interaction (e.g. HCI, STS, linguistic anthropology, sociology).
• You have experience with the analysis of conversational structure, including qualitative (conversation analysis) and quantitative (corpus) research or are highly motivated to acquire these skills.
• You have a demonstrable interest in language, social interaction and language technology.
• You are proactive and have a proven ability to conduct independent academic research and work in a collaborative research environment.
• You have an excellent command of English and an enthusiasm for reading widely and writing well.
• You are willing to perform teaching and service duties.

We are interested to hear from highly motivated candidates even if they may not check all the boxes of the requirements. Do feel free to get in touch if you have any questions beforehand.

4. We are

The Centre for Language Studies (CLS) is a research institute dedicated to the understanding of language and the way we use it. Our researchers study this topic from different perspectives and in several contexts, using a variety of innovative research methods. CLS aims to conduct language science that matters: fundamental research that sheds new light on language and that provides value to organisations and audiences outside the academic world.

Futures of Language is part of a vibrant research environment, which includes the CLS research groups Language and Social Interaction (LANSI) and Language and Speech Technology (LST), the interdisciplinary hub on digitisation and society (iHub), and the AI department. This postdoctoral position is funded by a Vici grant awarded to PI Dingemanse and will be embedded in the ’AI: Language and Communication Technologies’ section of the Language and Communication department.

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 €2,901 gross per month based on a 38-hour working week, which will increase to €3,707 in the fourth year (salary scale P).
• You will receive an 8% holiday allowance and an 8,3% end-of-year bonus. 
• We offer Dual Career Coaching. The Dual Career Coaching assists your partner via support, tools, and resources to improve their chances of independently finding employment in the Netherlands. 
• 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 Mark Dingemanse. In the application form, you will find which documents you need to include with your application.

You will be asked to submit a brief research proposal (max. 800 words excluding bibliography) in which you describe your own perspective related to one or more of the topics mentioned above and formulate tentative research ideas. We favour methodological approaches and theoretical lenses that are observational more than experimental and are rooted in empirical work on social interaction. This could be informed by conversation analysis, corpus linguistics, participatory observation or a combination of those. We recommend you study the Futures of Language project website to contextualise your application.

The first interviews will take place on Wednesday 10 September. Any second interview will take place on Tuesday 23 September. You will preferably start your employment on 1 October 2025.

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.