UiT The Arctic University of Norway has established «The Arctic MSCA-PF program» (uit.no/project/arcticmsca) to recruit excellent young researchers planning to apply for a Marie Skƚodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) to pursue a career in research. We invite applications from promising young researchers within the field of language acquisition and multilingualism. The selected candidate will write a proposal for a 24-month MSCA-PF at UiT together with Professor Merete Anderssen. This is an opportunity to accelerate your research career while living in the urban research city of Tromsø, uniquely located at the top of the world surrounded by some of Europe’s last pristine wild nature.

This call is one of 70 from pre-selected supervisors at UiT The Arctic University of Norway through the “Arctic MSCA-PF program”. Successful postdoc candidates will be invited for a three-day MSCA-PF symposium June 4-6, 2024 (hybrid physical/digital event, see details at uit.no/project/arcticmsca/program-structure). At this event, the candidates will present their past research achievements, discuss future plans with their potential supervisor and learn how to write a successful MSCA-PF application. The selected candidates will, jointly with the supervisor, write the MSCA-PF application by the deadline of September 11, 2024.

In this call we search for talented, young researchers within the field of language acquisition and multilingualism as presented by Professor Anderssen:

The multilingual experience can take many forms. It may involve a child growing up with two or more languages, a six-year-old having to learn the majority language/variety/written standard as she starts school, a child learning a first or a second foreign language in a school setting, or a multilingual adult whose use of her two or more languages may be considerably imbalanced. Even though multilingual situations vary along several dimensions, they all involve speakers who live with two or more languages/varieties in the same mind, and whose languages may influence one another.  This call invites projects on the role of crosslinguistic influence (CLI) in different multilingual setting, in both language use and language processing. Proposals on a variety of linguistic phenomena, language combinations and populations are welcome. I especially, but not exclusively, solicit projects that consider (i) what role structural overlap or linguistic distance plays in crosslinguistic influence (e.g. Hulk & Müller 2000, 2001); (ii) how experiential variables and general processing load can be teased apart from crosslinguistic influence; and (iii) how comparisons of multilinguals to multilinguals while keeping the target-language constant (for example, L2 learners of English with different L1s or Russian heritage speakers with different majority languages) can help us isolate crosslinguistic influence from other factors determining language outcomes. 

Please send your CV (max 3 pages) and describe a research project that will strengthen and complement the presented research (max 2 pages) to merete.anderssen@uit.no by Feb 16th 2024. Mark your application "Arctic MSCA". Successful candidates will be contacted in late March 2024.