Postdoc Position, Project ‘AI and the University – Towards a sociolinguistics of literacy and voice in the age of generative AI’

Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use (CIP) at the University of Copenhagen is offering a 3-year postdoc position commencing 1 September 2024. The candidate will undertake postdoctoral research as part of a five-year collaborative project on text-generative AI and the university (AI-UNI) funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.

AI-UNI

Large language models and their application as part of text-generative AI are rapidly changing the way we engage with language. The ways we write, read, speak and listen are all being transformed by various forms of AI technology which are quickly becoming part of the mainstream. In the university context these changes will have – and have in fact already had – quite fundamental consequences for how knowledge is produced, acquired, and disseminated. AI-UNI will contribute to an empirically founded and theoretically coherent understanding of how text-generative language technologies affect research, teaching and learning practices in academia, and what the implications are for knowledge production, dissemination, and evaluation.

The project will 1) document ongoing change in the way generative language technology is used as part of academic practices, 2) critically assess the associated implications for research, teaching, and learning, and 3) progressively build a theoretical model of human engagement with generative language technology as a site of sociolinguistic change.

Find more information at the UCPH job portal (link below).

The postdoc project

The successful postdoc candidate will undertake an independent research project, designed to fit the overall research agenda of AI-UNI. The postdoc will be expected to design and conduct a linguistic ethnographic case study focussing on the use of text-generative AI as part of research practices in the natural sciences or health sciences. The case study will revolve around one or two research groups (or similar university research unit). Following an initial period of observation, specific practices that involve the use of generative AI should be selected for detailed study in the remaining time of the field work.

Applicants are expected to outline a proposed research design for their case study as part of the application (see details below). The proposed postdoc project should allow the candidate to explore how text-generative AI is used as part of academic practices and critically assess the associated implications for research. The project should fall within the general framework of linguistic ethnography. This means that we welcome projects that include e.g. participant observation, recordings of textual practices and social interaction in offline and online environments, as well as ethnographic interviews and feedback sessions with participants. Theoretically, the postdoc project should contribute to the host project’s understanding of the use of text-generative AI at the university as a site of sociolinguistic change with potential implications for how we conceptualize the notions of literacy and voice in sociolinguistics.

Teaching

The postdoc position is primarily devoted to research, but the successful candidate will also be expected to contribute to the development and delivery of an MA module on Sociolinguistics and AI together with the AI-UNI research group.

Find more information on qualification requirements, assessment criteria and the recruitment process, click the 'Apply' button