The position

A Postdoctoral Research Fellow position in multilingualism is available at the Department of Language and Culture, Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. The position is affiliated with the Center for Language, Brain & Learning (C-LaBL), more specifically the language domain (see more detailed description below). C-LaBL is financed by the Trond Mohn Foundation in the period 2024–2029.

Expected starting date: August/September 2025 or earlier.

The position is a fixed term position for a duration of 3years. 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.

The Department of Language and Culture

The Department of Language and Culture has a very active and diverse research profile. The Department’s core activities are research, teaching, and dissemination within linguistics, literature, art history, and media and documentation studies. The Department hosts about 160 employees the majority of which are situated at the Tromsø campus, but some are at the Alta campus. There are about 500 students at the department.

The Department houses one of the world’s foremost research communities in linguistics represented by Center for Language, Brain and Learning (C-LaBL). I addition, there are research groups within acquisition (AcqVA-Nor), cognitive linguistics (CLEAR), Sami language technology (Giellatekno and Divvun), and sociolinguistics, multilingualism, and revitalization (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 Arctic Voices, Engaging Conflicts in a Digital Era (ENCODE), Health, Art and Society (HAS), Interdisciplinary Phenomenology (IP), Pax Slavia in FLux: European Contexts (PSIF) and Worlding Northern Art (WONA).

ISK offers teaching in the following fields: linguistics, literature, art history, media and documentation studies, English, Kven, Finnish, Norwegian, Russian, Sami, Spanish, and German, as one-year programmes, as well as full Bachelor and Master programmes (including three international programmes). The department is also involved in teacher education level 8-13 and provides teaching in North Sami, Spanish, English, Nordic, Russian and German. In addition, the department is responsible for all the Sami language teaching (mother tongue and second language) at UiT. It also offers PhD programmes in linguistics, cultural/literary studies, art history, as well as media and documentation studies.

The Center for Language, Brain and Learning (C-LaBL)

The advertised position will be one of nine new positions in the Center for Language, Brain & Learning (C-LaBL), three that started in the fall of 2024, three in 2025, and three in 2026. The center has also hired a lab director, a lab/admin position and six Prof II positions (20% professorships).

The following is a brief description of the center:

The Center for Language, Brain and Learning (C-LaBL) aims to provide a step-change in our understanding of how multiple languages interact in the mind/brain, develop innovative longitudinal methodologies to study multi­lingualism, and train the next generation of scholars and research leaders in this increasingly important field. By fostering collaborative research across linguistic theories, neuroscience, and language acquisi­tion/pro­cessing, we focus on the effects of multilingualism – for the languages involved, for the brains that house them, and for the learning and teaching of multiple languages. C-LaBL is divided into three domains of study (Language, Brain, and Learning) linked by a cross-cutting research theme focusing on Linguistic Distance. Thus, the core work of C-LaBL will investigate the interaction of multiple grammars in the multilingual mind/brain, with a main focus on the signi­ficance of lin­guistic dis­tance (simi­lari­ties/differences be­tween languages) for development, crosslinguistic influence, neuro­cognitive adapta­tions in the brain as a result of multi­lingual experience, as well as instructed additional language learning. Work at the center will be theore­tically motivated and use a variety of research methods, inclu­ding offline behavioral experiments, eye-tracking, electro­encephalography (EEG), and Magnetic Resonance Ima­ging (MRI). The research will be of practical relevance to current soci­etal chal­lenges related to education and health. The C-LaBL Mentorship Program will pro­vide a comprehensive training scheme to a number of postdoctoral fellows, ensuring that future leaders in the field of multi­lingualism have a solid background that crosscuts all three domains.

The research community in language acquisition, variation and multilingualism at UiT currently consists of approximately 40 active researchers, including eleven professors/associate professors, a lab manager, four postdoctoral fellows, eight MSCA postdocs, three PhD students, seven Professor II positions (20%), and an internationally renowned Scientific Advisory Board. The group members are involved in a number of research projects both locally and internationally, e.g. the MuMin and MultiLit projects financed by the Research Council of Norway. For further information about the group’s work and activities, see the website of the Center for Language, Brain & Learning (C-LaBL).

The advertised postdoc position will give the successful candidate the opportunity to work closely with an outstanding team of linguists. The postdoctoral fellow hired will be expected to participate in meetings across the three domains and this way contribute to collaboration.

For further information about the position and the Center for Language, Brain & Learning, please contact one of the PIs of the language domain (see contact information below) in order to get access to the full project proposal for C-LaBL.

The project/position's field of research

The advertised postdoc is part of the Language domain in C-LaBL. This domain studies numerous language/dialect combinations in a concerted effort to probe the mental mechanisms of interacting languages/varieties. A core goal is to establish what measures of linguistic similarities, differences, and distance between varieties are cognitively relevant for crosslinguistic influence (CLI). Our approach is empirically driven: We systematically investigate the presence and extent of CLI in multilingual language acquisition and evaluate the role of overall proximity between languages and structural similarity between individual linguistic properties.

In order to investigate how structural overlap affects the dynamics between the languages in multilingual minds, we will investigate the acquisition of these grammatical properties in selected learner populations (simultaneous and sequential heritage bilinguals, L2 and L3 learners, and potential attriters) of specific language combinations. To assess the effect of linguistic distance, we investigate the acquisition of structurally (dis)similar properties in a variety of acquisition contexts and compare groups of speakers whose languages are closely related to groups whose languages are more distant. The effect of linguistic distance will also be measured against exposure (input, usage, experience). In sum, this approach enables us to probe how linguistic distance influences the acquisition and processing of multiple languages; more specifically, whether the effects of cross-linguistic influence in a multilingual mind are stronger between closely related languages/varieties than between more distant ones.

Contact

For further information about the position, please contact Associate Professor Natalia Mitrofanova:

• email: natalia.mitrofanova@uit.no

or Head of Department Cathrine Theodorsen:

• email: cathrine.theodorsen@uit.no

Qualifications

Required qualifications: 

• A PhD in linguistics, language sciences, cognitive science, psychology, philology, or another relevant field. If you're in the final stages of your PhD, you may still apply for the position, provided that you submit parts of your dissertation along with your application. This enables the evaluation committee to assess the quality and likelihood of completion by the desired employment date. You must include a statement from your supervisor or institution stating the expected completion date for your PhD degree. Documentation of your completed PhD degree must be submitted before commencement.
• Excellent command of spoken and written English. Nordic applicants can document their capabilities by attaching their high school diploma.

Desired qualifications: 

• Experience with experimental design, data collection and analysis.
• Expertise in Germanic and/or Slavic languages (especially Ukrainian)
• Expertise in language typology, language acquisition and/or multilingualism.
• Experience in working with children
• Expertise in EEG

In the assessment the main emphasis will be attached to the submitted works for the qualifying work. 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. We are looking for candidates who:

• Have good collaboration skills
• Have good communication and interaction with colleagues and students
• Wants to contribute to a good working environment

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

Inclusion and diversity

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 immigrant background, we encourage you to tick the box for this in your application. If there are qualified applicants, we invite 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.

We offer

• 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

Norwegian health policy aims to ensure that everyone, irrespective of their personal finances and where they live, has access to good health and care services of equal standard. As an employee you will become member of the National Insurance Scheme which also include health care services.

More practical information for working and living in Norway can be found here: https://uit.no/staffmobility

Application

Your application must include:

• Application letter
• Contextualizing statement/proposal (max 2 pages), detailing how the candidate fits into the research done in C-LaBL (including investigations across the domains).
• Contextualizing statement/proposal, detailing how the candidate plans to contribute to the research in the Language domain (2-3 pages).
• CV (containing a complete overview of education, supervised professional training and professional work, as well as a list of publications).
• Diplomas and transcripts (all degrees)
• Documentation of English proficiency
• 3-4 references, inclusive of contact information
• Two samples of published work or other professional writings.

If you're in the final stages of your PhD, you may still apply for the position, provided that you submit parts of your dissertation along with your application. This enables the evaluation committee to assess the quality and likelihood of completion by the desired employment date. You must include a statement from your supervisor or institution stating the expected completion date for your PhD degree. Documentation of your completed PhD degree must be submitted before commencement.

All documentation to be considered must be in a Scandinavian language or English. If English proficiency is not documented in the application, it must be documented before starting in the position. We only accept applications and documentation sent via Jobbnorge within the application deadline.

Assessment

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 description draw up 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.

General information

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

After the appointment you must assume that there may be changes in the area of work.

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. You will become a member of the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund, which gives you many benefits in addition to a lifelong pension: You may be entitled to financial support if you become ill or disabled, your family may be entitled to financial support when you die, you become insured against occupational injury or occupational disease, and you can get good terms on a mortgage. Read more about your employee benefits at: spk.no.

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 description, the Norwegian version takes precedence.

Eallju - Developing the High North

UiT The Arctic University of Norway is a multi-campus comprehensive university at the international forefront. Our vision is to be a driving force for developing the High North. The Northern Sami notion eallju, which means eagerness to work, sets the tone for this motive power at UiT. Along with students, staff and the wider community, we aim to utilise our location in Northern Norway and Sápmi, our broad and diverse research and study portfolio and interdisciplinary advantage to shape the future.

Our social mission is to provide research-based education of high quality, perform artistic development and carry out research of the highest international quality standards in the entire range from basic to applied. We will convey knowledge about disciplines and contribute to innovation. Our social mission unites UiT across various studies, research fields and large geographical distances. This demands good cooperation with trade and industry and civil society as well as with international partners. We will strengthen knowledge-based and sustainable development at a regional, national and international level.

Academic freedom and scientific and ethical principles form the basis for all UiT’s activities. Participation, co-determination, transparency and good processes will provide the decision-making basis we need to make wise and far-sighted priorities. Our students and staff will have the opportunity to develop their abilities and potential. Founded on academic integrity, we will be courageous, committed and generous in close contact with disciplines, people and contemporary developments.

We will demonstrate adaptability and seek good and purposeful utilisation of resources, so we are ready to meet the expectations and opportunities of the future. We will strengthen the quality and impact of our disciplines and core tasks through the following three strategic priority areas.