BANGOR UNIVERSITY : SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY

Two-year Early Stage Research Fellowship in

Foundations of Spelling Development in European Languages and Computational Approaches to Spelling Analysis

Salary: £26394 p.a. (with potential for increase depending on exchange rate movements)

The fellow will join a 7-member Marie Curie-funded training network: ELDEL (Enhancing Literacy Development in European Languages).

Applications are invited for an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) fellowship for 24 months in the areas of spelling development and computational psycholinguistics. The position is available as part of an EC – Marie Curie, FP7 Initial Training Network (ITN): Enhancing Literacy Development in European Languages (ELDEL, www.eldel.eu), led by Dr Markéta Caravolas. The post offers excellent research training opportunities as well as access to resources in developmental psycholinguistics at Bangor’s School of Psychology and Miles Dyslexia Centre, as well as in the ELDEL network of 7 partner institutions, located in 5 European countries. The recipient of the fellowship will be eligible to apply for post-graduate studies as a Research Trainee.

The Researcher will work on cross-linguistic projects (i) investigating the language-general and language-specific aspects of early spelling development in 5 European languages, and (ii) developing automated techniques of spelling analysis, as well as corpus-building work, in collaboration with Prof. Brett Kessler.  S/he will be expected to be involved primarily in the analysis and interpretation of existing data sets, and in dissemination of findings, but may also contribute to sample recruitment, and data collection. Experience of research involving young children in primary school and/or computational linguistics will be an asset, as will knowledge of psycholinguistic approaches to reading and spelling. The ELDEL network’s research programme has a strong cross-linguistic theme which will necessitate the ability to coordinate activities with researchers working in parallel in languages other than English, to travel for training and research purposes to other European network sites, and to contribute to a cross-language database on early literacy. Knowledge of more than one of the ELDEL languages will also be an asset.

The successful candidate will be expected to start on 1^st July, 2010.

Closing date for applications is 26^th  March, 2010.

Application details and further particulars are available at: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/corporate/vacancies/

For informal discussions concerning this position, candidates are encouraged to contact:

Mrs Juliet Bennett   : +44 (0)1248 388561 or Email: j.bennett@bangor.ac.uk