MSCA-PF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of English and German Philology.

Professor Cristóbal Lozano, from the Department of English and German Philology at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) in 2022 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (for more information about the 2022 call, please consult: http://sl.ugr.es/0cmA).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR) was founded in 1531 and is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. With over 60,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and 6,000 members of staff, the UGR offers over 70 undergraduate degrees, 100 master’s degrees (9 of which are international double degrees) and 28 doctoral programmes via its 127 departments and 22 centers. Accordingly, the UGR offers one of the most extensive and diverse ranges of higher education programmes in Spain.

The UGR has been awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the institution’s commitment to continuously improving its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. The UGR is also internationally renowned for its excellence in diverse research fields and ranked among the top Spanish universities in a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, and international funding.

The UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). The 2021 edition of the ARWU places the UGR in 201-300th position in the world and as the second highest ranked university in Spain (http://sl.ugr.es/0cmF), reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research. The UGR stands out in the specialties of Library & Information Science (position 36); Food Science & Technology (39) and Hospitality & Tourism Management (51-75), according to the latest edition of this prestigious ranking by specialties (http://sl.ugr.es/0bSp). A little lower in the ranking, the UGR also stands out in Mathematics (76-100) and Mining & Mineral Engineering (76-100).

Additionally, the UGR has 7 researchers who are at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list (http://sl.ugr.es/0cmD), most of these related to the area of Computer Science. It is also well recognized for its web presence (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i), being positioned at 54th place in the top 200 Universities in Europe.

Internationally, the University of Granada is firmly committed to its participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the last two Framework Programmes, the UGR has obtained for FP7 a total of 67 projects, with total funding of 18.029 million euros, and for H2020, 119 projects with a total funding of around 29.233 million euros.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group:

The ANACOREX research group is made up of (psycho)linguists. Around half of them are based at the Universidad de Granada, while the rest are in different European universities. A few postgraduate students (MAs and PhDs) also participate in the project. The team represents a balance in terms of seniority (senior vs. junior researchers), fields of expertise (second language acquisition, bilingualism, psycholinguistics, learner corpora, theoretical models, computational linguistics).

- Universidad de Granada (UGR): Cristóbal Lozano (PI), Ana Díaz-Negrillo, Nobuo Ignacio López Sako, Teresa Quesada, Fernando Martín-Villena, Elena García-Guerrero, Jorge Montaño, Maica Espínola Rosillo.

- University of Edinburgh: Antonella Sorace

- Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM): Amaya Mendikoetxea, Aída García-Tejada

- University of Frankfurt (Germany): Jacopo Torregrossa

- Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal): Ana Madeira , Alexandra Fiéis

- Universidade do Porto (Portugal): Joana Teixeira

- Universidad de San Andrés Buenos Aires (Argentina): Carlos Gelormini-Lezama

- University of Ioanina (Greece): Alexandra Prentza

- University of Bremen (Germany): Marcus Callies

- Vrije Universitet Brussel (Belgium): An Vande Casteele

- NLP Go Technologies (Spain): Mario Barcala

Project description:

ANACOREX (Anaphora and referring expressions in bilingualism: Triangulating corpus and experimental approaches).

A key questions in bilingualism and L2 acquisition is how bilinguals’ two languages are acquired/processed and interact. In our 4-year long ANACOREX research project (Sept 2021-Aug 2025) we investigate how several bilingual populations acquire/process anaphora resolution (AR) by combining corpus and experimental methods.

AR relates to the way different referring expressions (REs) relate to their antecedents in prior discourse. We seek to understand the multiple (psycho)linguistic, cognitive and cross-linguistic factors that constrain the choice of REs in bilinguals’ discourse by triangulating:

-different research methodologies: corpus and experiments;

-different data types from the same bilinguals (spoken vs. written);

-different AR factors (linguistic, discursive, psycholinguistic);

- different bilingual populations;

- different L1-L2 combinations;

- different theoretical approaches.

In ANACOREX we triangulate data from different research methods:

- Our learner Corpora: CEDEL2 (L2 Spanish), COREFL (L2 English), and JFLCorp (L2 Japanese, under development).

- Offline experiments (acceptability judgment tasks).

- Reaction Time experiments (Open Sesame).

- Eye Tracking experiments (SR Eyelink Portable Duo).

Data are being collected both in situ (in our ‘LinguaLab’ equipped with experimental software, eye tracker, equipment for oral language recordings) and online (corpus data collection, server for the online administration of experiments).

Applications are welcome from motivated candidates who wish to develop a postdoctoral research line within our ANACOREX project. The candidate will be based at the Universidad de Granada (Spain), though s/he is expected to do research stays with our ANACOREX team members as well.

The candidate is expected to (i) be knowledgeable about research on anaphora resolution and/or referring expressions, (ii) be familiar with at least one of the research methods to be used (learner corpora, reaction time, eye tracking) [priority will be given to candidates with a background in eye tracking], (iii) have a solid training in the area (Second Language Acquisition/Bilingualism, Psycholinguistics, Learner Corpora), and (iv) work well in a team.

More info about ANACOREX:

https://www.researchgate.net/project/ANACOREX-Anaphora-and-referring-expressions-in-bilingualism-Triangulating-corpus-and-experimental-approaches

Research Area:

• Social Sciences and Humanities (SOC)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Cristóbal Lozano (cristoballozano@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)