Postdoctoral candidate in Learner Corpus Studies

at  Universiteit Antwerpen

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Departement: Departement Taalkunde
Regime Voltijds

POSTDOCTORAL PREPARATORY MANDATE IN LEARNER CORPUS STUDIES AT THE UANTWERP!

The University of Antwerp is a dynamic, forward-thinking, European university. We offer an innovative academic education to more than 20000 students, conduct pioneering scientific research and play an important service-providing role in society. We are one of the largest, most international and most innovative employers in the region. With more than 6000 employees from 100 different countries, we are helping to build tomorrow’s world every day. Through top scientific research, we push back boundaries and set a course for the future – a future that you can help to shape.
The research group Grammar and Pragmatics (GaP) of the Faculty of Arts and humanities (Letteren en Wijsbegeerte) at the University of Antwerp is seeking a post-doctoral candidate willing to write a post-doctoral research proposal that tackles the topic of syntactic complexity in English as a Foreign/Second Language. The aims are to advance conceptual clarity, provide pedagogically and linguistically transparent operationalizations, and create an open-source L2 syntactic complexity annotation system and accompanying software tool (see brief project description below).
The top ranked candidate will acquire a 6- or 12-month (depending on the type of contract) full-time preparatory mandate to write a postdoctoral project on this topic and submit a competitive research proposal to FWO (Flemish Science Foundation), with the University of Antwerp as host institution.
External and internal post-doc researchers must be eligible to submit an FWO post-doc. The list of eligibility criteria can be found here.

POSITION

This call invites innovative postdoctoral proposals to redefine and advance the study of syntactic complexity (SC) in second language (L2) English. SC, a core component of the Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency (CAF) triad, reflects linguistic sophistication and risk-taking in L2 development. However, despite its critical role in L2 research, teaching, and assessment, SC remains plagued by conceptual ambiguity, inconsistent operationalizations, and overreliance on opaque automatic tools.

We seek proposals addressing the following key goals:

• Clarifying the SC Construct: Developing a linguistically transparent and pedagogically interpretable framework to define SC, accessible to learners, educators, assessors, and researchers.
• Creating Open-Source Resources: Proposing tools such as a SC annotation guide and software to standardize the identification, definition, and analysis of SC units, fostering consistency in research and practical application (similar to the tools developed for accuracy here).
• Join us in reshaping SC research to ensure its relevance, usability, and impact across L2 English contexts.
• We are seeking a talented and motivated postdoctoral researcher to join our group. The successful candidate will contribute to groundbreaking research in Learner Corpus Research and/or Second Language Acquisition, focusing on syntactic complexity in L2 English.

Please refer the Job description for details