Looking for MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships candidates - Gesture, Prosody, Embodied Cognition

• Are you thinking about spending one or two years as a postdoc in a very active and international research environment?
• Are you a highly motivated and enthusiastic researcher looking for a competitive project?

Prof. Pilar Prieto, established at the Department of Translation and Language Sciencies of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), is looking to support candidates interested in submitting a proposal for the MSCA-PF is some of these domains: Embodied Cognition, Processing of Gesture and Prosody.

The Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships scheme (MSCA-PF) is a prestigious European funding programme that supports mobility, career development, and training within and beyond Europe. The scheme offers highly competitive salary and research costs. 

About us

Pilar Prieto is an ICREA Research Professor at the Department of Translation and Language Sciences at UPF (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Barcelona, Catalunya.  After obtaining her doctoral degree in Romance Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, New Jersey), where she continued working on the linguistic meaning of prosody across languages. Since 2008 she coordinates the "Prosodic Studies and Gesture Group" at the Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Her main research goal is to understand the role of prosody and co-speech gestures in human communication from a crosslinguistic, developmental, and cognitive perspective. Three important strands of this research include: (a) to incorporate this knowledge into semantic models of language that model the interface areas with other components; (b) to empirically investigate how humans process prosodic and gestural patterns in combination with speech; and (c) to investigate the cognitive and developmental benefits of prosody and gesture in different areas, such as first and second language acquisition, as well as communication training for language impaired and non-impaired populations. The social significance of this research topic is high, as ICT training procedures based on prosodic and gestural awareness can be proven valuable to improve language abilities in populations with neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impaired social interaction.  

Eligibility criteria

MSCA-PF are for Postdoctoral Researchers of up to 8 years after the PhD. Applicants from any country may apply, but must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the submission deadline to the European Commission (11/09/2024).

Selection process

Applicants should check that they fulfil all the eligibility criteria and then send an expression of interest consisting of a CV, a summary presentation of the research proposal (c. 2 pages) and the contact information of at least two referees.

Expressions of interest must be submitted by email by April 30^th. The title of the e-mail must be "MSCA application – Prof. Pilar Prieto – your name and surname". Proposals will be preselected on the basis of internal evaluation.

Support program

In addition to receiving multiple feedback from your supervisor, if chosen to submit the proposal to the European Commission, you will also receive advice from a dedicated research advisor at UPF's Research Service. Additionally, you will be invited to join an internal Info session where you will get to know the do's and don'ts of these fellowships.