[Lingtyp] PhD Position: Statistical Modeling of Language Evolution, University of Zurich

[Lena Zipp]

Dear all,

We would be grateful if you could forward this advertisement for a PhD position to any students who might be interested.

Thank you,

Lena Zipp

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PhD Position in the Statistical Modeling of Linguistic Evolution

The Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE)<http://www.isle.uzh.ch/> at the University of Zurich (UZH) offers a PhD training and research position in the statistical modeling of linguistic evolution under varied conditions. The work will be tightly integrated with the Diversification project of the NCCR Evolving Language (https://evolvinglanguage.ch/diversification-project/). You will join Professor Balthasar Bickel's Distributional Linguistics Lab<https://www.isle.uzh.ch/en/DLL.html> and will be integrated into the NCCR Evolving Language, a Swiss network of scientists from the natural, social, cognitive, and computational sciences working together on the evolution of language. Your dissertation will be supervised by Balthasar Bickel, Chundra Cathcart, and Anna Graff.

You will acquire and/or deepen knowledge in the theory and methods of linguistic evolution (in particular using probabilistic programming languages such as Stan to develop explicit quantitative models), lead the development of at least three publishable papers jointly with supervisors and other collaborators, and submit a dissertation integrating these papers with a review of the state of the art. You will actively participate in lab meetings, NCCR events, and journal clubs.

You are trained in historical and typological linguistics and are familiar with the basics of statistics and data wrangling. Familiarity with Bayesian approaches and/or phylogenetic comparative methods are additional assets. You furthermore have a vivid interest in adjacent fields, in particular neurolinguistics and human population genetics. You have excellent communication skills in English.

Start date: 1 September 2025, or by arrangement.
Review of applications will begin on 1 June 2025, and continue until the position is filled.

For more information and to apply: https://www.isle.uzh.ch/en/jobs/phd-statistical-modeling-linguistic-evolution.html
For further information about the project, please contact Balthasar Bickel<mailto:balthasar.bickel at uzh.ch?subject=Job%20advert%20PhD%20in%20Statistical%20Modeling%20of%20Linguistic%20Evolution>. For administrative questions please contact Lena Zipp<mailto:dll_coordinator at isle.uzh.ch?subject=Job%20Advert%20PhD%20in%20Statistical%20Modeling%20of%20Linguistic%20Evolution>.





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Lena Zipp
Administration
Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE Institute)
University of Zurich
Affolternstrasse 56
8050 Zurich
www.isle.uzh.ch<http://www.isle.uzh.ch>


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