Postdoctoral ResearchFellow in Multilingualism

One 2-year position as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in multilingualism is available in the Department of Language and Culture. The position is affiliated with the AcqVA Aurora Centre  (Language Acquisition, Variation & Attrition): The Dynamic Nature of Languages in the Mind and the project ADIM (Across-Domain Investigations in Multilingualism) , a Polish-Norwegian project financed by EEA Norway grants. ADIM is a collaborative project between three institutions, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (AMU), NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, and UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. In addition to the Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UiT, there will be a corresponding position at NTNU and two in Poznan. The project must be completed by April 30, 2024.

The position is a fixed term position for a duration of 2 years. Appointment to the position of Postdoctoral Research Fellow is mainly intended to provide qualification for work in top academic positions. It is a prerequisite that the applicant can carry out the project over the full course of the employment period. No person may hold more than one fixed term position as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the same institution.

The workplace is at UiT in Tromsø. You must be able to start in the position within a reasonable time after receiving the offer, preferabely before May 2, 2022.

The Department of Language and Culture’ s core activities are research, teaching, and outreach within linguistics, literature, art history, and media and documentation studies. The Department hosts 83 permanent employees, 16 adjunct professors, and approximately 25 PhD fellows, as well as roughly 35 temporary research and teaching positions.

The Department has a very active and diverse research profile. It houses one of the world’s most excellent research communities in linguistics represented by AcqVA Aurora Centre, and research groups within cognitive linguistics (CLEAR), Sami language technology (Giellatekno and Divvun), theoretical linguistics (CASTL-FISH) and sociolinguistics and revitalization, Multilingual North, Diversity, Education and Revitalisation (MULTINOR). The Department’s research communities within literature, art history, and media and documentation studies are nationally highly competitive and are organised into research groups such as Health, Art and Society (HAS), Russian Space (RSCPR), Libraries, archives, museums, in the community (LAMCOM), Arctic Voices in Art and Literature (ARCTIC VOICES), Just Literature (JUL), Interdisciplinary Phenomenology (IP) and Worlding Northern Art (WONA).

ISK offers one-year programmes, as well as full Bachelor and Master programmes in the following fields: General linguistics, literature, art history, media and documentation studies, English, Kven, Finnish, Norwegian, Russian, Sami, Spanish, and German. It also offers PhD programmes in linguistics, cultural/literary studies, art history, as well as media and documentation studies.

The AcqVA Aurora Centre  currently consists of approximately 40 active researchers, including 10 professors/associate professors, 11 researchers/postdoctoral research fellows (including five MSCA postdoctoral researchers), four PhD students, and eight Professor II positions (20% adjunct professors). The group members are involved in a number of research projects both locally and internationally, e.g. the MuMin, MultiLit, LESS and SALT projects financed by the Research Council of Norway, the MultiGender project funded by the Centre for Advanced Study, the HeLPiNG project funded by the Tromsø Research Foundation, and numerous projects funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. The AcqVA Aurora Centre currently has two labs, the AcqVA lab and the PoLaR lab. For further information about the group’s work and activities, see the website of AcqVA Aurora.

AcqVA Aurora is a UiT Aurora Centre, funded for the period 2020-2024. The highly competitive UiT Aurora Centre scheme provides funding to research groups that demonstrate excellence, in order to strengthen their capacity to be successful in the competition for larger external funding. The successful applicant for the advertized position will be able to work together with an outstanding team of linguists and must have her/his daily workplace at UiT, campus Tromsø.

The scientific investigation of multilingual language acquisition is vibrant and growing. However, studies typically focus exclusively on one language domain in a selected acquisition setting. What is missing is a broader picture of multilingual acquisition, processing and use. Especially the phenomenon of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) investigated across different domains in multilingual acquisition still remains largely unexplored. The ADIM project aims to bridge this gap by addressing these issues in an interdisciplinary and comprehensive manner. ADIM focuses on three groups of multilingual learners who share the same language repertoire but vary in their specific profiles with respect to the setting and stage of acquisition. Participants are L1 speakers of Polish with English as L2 acquiring Norwegian as an L3 in instructed and naturalistic settings respectively, both at initial and advanced stages of acquisition, and Polish/Norwegian L1 bilinguals acquiring English as an L3. While L3 research has so far predominantly been based on e.g. acceptability judgement tasks (for syntax) or perception/production tests (for phonology), the ADIM project will supplement these with methodology that has so far generally not been common in this field, EEG/ERPs and eyetracking. The novelty of the present project pertains to how electrophysiological evidence combined with more traditional behavioral methods can inform the theory of L3 acquisition, in particular, to examine transfer source selectivity in L3/Ln. ADIM will further test and modify existing theoretical models of L3 acquisition so that they offer an optimal explanatory framework which can account for the complexity of the acquisition process in the multilingual mind. The project will thus contribute to a greater understanding of multilingual competence and its acquisition and processing in general, but it will also document the speech patterns of Polish-Norwegian multilingual communities with different constellations of stage and setting of acquisition.

The Postdoctoral Research Fellow will be responsible for Work Package 3 of the ADIM project: Study on L3/Ln acquisition of (morpho)syntax. The exact phenomena selected for investigation in our L3 populations will therefore to some extent be dependent on the background and expertise of the scholar who will fill this position.

Applicants must provide a general contextualizing statement/proposal (2 pages maximum), indicating how they see their background and experience fitting into the ADIM project, especially in relation to Work Package 3. Please contact the PI of ADIM (see contact details below) for access to the full research proposal and any questions you might have.

For further information about the position and the ADIM project and AcqVA Aurora Centre, please consult the project website and/or contact the PI of ADIM via E-mail:

Required qualifications

• A completed Norwegian doctoral degree (PhD) in Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Psychology or another relevant field, or an equivalent foreign doctoral degree 
• Demonstrable experience with previous research within multilingualism
• Excellent command of spoken and written English

Preferred qualifications

• Knowledge of Norwegian or another Scandinavian language
• Knowledge of Polish or another Slavic language
• Experience with relevant methodologies, ranging from traditional behavioral approaches to experimental techniques

Since ADIM is a joint project between three institutions (see above), the successful candidate for the UiT position will be expected to work closely with the postdoctoral fellow hired at NTNU, as well as the team at AMU in Poznan. In the hiring process for both positions we will seek to hire candidates with complementary expertise.

A complited PhD is required before commencement in the position. If you’re at the final stages of your PhD, you may still apply if you have submitted your PhD thesis for doctoral degree evaluation within the application deadline. You must submit the thesis with your application. You must have dissertated before the start-up date of the position.

In the assessment the main emphasis will be attached to the submitted works and the project proposal. Emphasis shall also be attached to experience from popularization/dissemination and academic policy and administrative activity.

During the assessment, emphasis will be put on the candidate’s motivation, potential for research, and personal suitability for the position.

At UiT we put emphasis on the quality, relevance and significance of the research and not on where the work is published, in accordance with the principles of The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA ).

UiT The Arctic University i Norway is working actively to promote equality, gender balance and diversity among employees and students, and to create an inclusive and safe working environment. We believe that inclusion and diversity is a strength, and we want employees with different competencies, professional experience, life experience and perspectives.  

If you have a disability, a gap in your CV or an immigrant background, we encourage you to tick the box for this in your application. If there are qualified applicants, we invite at least one in each group for an interview. If you get the job, we will adapt the working conditions if you need it. Apart from selecting the right candidates, we will only use the information for anonymous statistics. 

• Involvement in an interesting research project 
• Good career opportunities 
• A good academic environment with dedicated colleagues  
• Flexible working hours and a state collective pay agreement  
• Pension scheme through the state pension fund  
• More practical information for working and living in Norway can be found here: https://uit.no/staffmobility  

Your application must include:

• Application letter
• Contextualizing statement/proposal (max 2 pages), detailing how the candidate plans to contribute to the research done in the ADIM project 
• CV (containing a complete overview of education, supervised professional training and professional work).
• Diplomas and transcripts (all degrees)
• Contact information to 3-4 references
• A list of your academic production
• Description of your academic production, stating which works you consider most important
• Three samples of published work or other professional writings, the doctoral thesis is regarded as one work.

All documentation to be considered must be in a Scandinavian language or English. We only accept applications and documentation sent via Jobbnorge within the application deadline.

The applicants will be assessed by an expert committee. The committee's mandate is to undertake an assessment of the applicants' qualifications based on the written material presented by the applicants, and the detailed job description  for the position.

The applicants who are assessed as best qualified will be called to an interview. The interview should, among other things, aim to clarify the applicant’s motivation and personal suitability for the position. A trial lecture may also be held.

The appointment is made in accordance with State regulations and guidelines at UiT. At our website, you will find more information for applicants . 

The remuneration for Postdoctoral Research Fellow is in accordance with the State salary scale code 1352. A compulsory contribution of 2 % to the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund will be deducted.

The successful candidate must be willing to get involved in the ongoing development of their department and the university as a whole.

According to the Norwegian Freedom and Information Act (Offentleglova) information about the applicant may be included in the public applicant list, also in cases where the applicant has requested non-disclosure. 

In case of discrepancies between the Norwegian and the English version of this job description, the Norwegian version takes precedence.

UiT is a multi-campus research university in Norway and the northernmost university of the world. Our central location in the High North, our broad and diverse research and study portfolio, and our interdisciplinary qualities make us uniquely suited to meet the challenges of the future. At UiT you can explore global issues from a close-up perspective.

Credibility, academic freedom, closeness, creativity, and commitment shall be hallmarks of the relationship between our employees, between our employees and our students, and between UiT and our partners.