Job Description

Note: This page is for informative purposes only. The official call (particularly, the legal requirements for candidates) and all information related to the selection process (admission, short list, final result) is published in the Department’s website.

Position description:

The Prosodic and Gestural Studies Research Group (GREPG) in the Department of Translation and Language Sciences at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) invites applications for a fully funded PhD position within the ERC Advanced Grant PROSODY-SENSES: Prosody across senses: Testing a reconceptualization of prosody as a modality-neutral component of language governing spoken, visual and tactile signals, led by Prof. Pilar Prieto.

PhD1: Multisensory Prosody in Spoken Catalan

The successful candidate will contribute to Strand 1 of the project, investigating the multisensory implementation of prosody in spoken Catalan. The project will examine how prominence and grouping are jointly realized through speech, facial movements, head movements, manual gestures, and hand pressure signals. Drawing on controlled production experiments and multimodal corpora, the candidate will combine acoustic, kinematic, and linguistic analyses with three-dimensional motion capture to investigate modality-neutral principles of prosodic organization. The candidate will contribute to the development of annotation protocols and quantitative analyses for modelling the magnitude and temporal coordination of prosodic cues across speech data, working closely with the ERC postdoctoral researcher responsible for multimodal motion-capture modelling.

The dissertation will follow an article-based format, comprising three to four publishable papers in international peer-reviewed journals. The candidate will be jointly supervised by Dr. Patrick L. Rohrer (Universitat Rovira i Virgili) and Prof. Pilar Prieto (ICREA–Universitat Pompeu Fabra), and will also benefit from close co-supervision and methodological training provided by one of the ERC-funded postdoctoral researchers specializing in multimodal motion-capture modelling. Together, this supervisory team will provide complementary expertise in multimodal communication, prosody, and advanced motion-capture methodologies.

Tasks:

• Design and conduct experimental studies on the multisensory production of prosody in Catalan.
• Collect multimodal datasets using synchronized audio-video recording and optical motion capture.
• Annotate and analyse acoustic, facial, head, and manual movement data.
• Contribute to the development of quantitative models of multimodal prosodic coordination.
• Publish research articles in leading international journals.
• Present results at international conferences.
• Participate actively in project meetings, seminars, workshops, and dissemination activities.
• Contribute to collaborative activities within the ERC project.

Eligibility

Applicants must:

• Hold (or be close to completing) a Master's degree in Linguistics, Experimental Phonetics, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Psychology, Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Demonstrate strong interest in speech/multisensory prosody, multimodal communication, language production, or experimental phonetics.
• Have experience with experimental research and quantitative data analysis.
• Have previous experience writing scientific articles or conference papers.
• Demonstrate excellent teamwork and communication skills.
• Have excellent written and spoken English.
• Native or near-native proficiency in Catalan is strongly preferred, as the project involves the collection and analysis of Catalan spoken language.
• Experience with motion capture, audiovisual annotation, ELAN, Praat, R, or Python

Qualifications

• Academic excellence and previous research experience (40%)
• Quality and relevance of Master's thesis and previous publications (25%)
• Fit with the scientific objectives of PROSODY-SENSES (20%)
• Personal interview, during which the candidate's motivation, communication skills, research potential, knowledge of the research area, ability to work collaboratively, and overall fit with the project and its interdisciplinary research environment will be assessed (15%).

Candidates obtaining at least 75/100 on the first three points may be invited for an interview.

Application Instructions

Applicants should submit the following documents:

• Cover letter
• Curriculum vitae
• Academic transcripts (Bachelor's and Master's)
• Copy of MA or MSc degree (or expected completion certificate)
• One writing sample (published paper, Master's thesis chapter, or equivalent)
• Contact details of two academic referees
• Copy of passport or national identity card

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

UPF promotes a diverse and inclusive environment and welcomes applicants regardless of age, disability, gender, nationality, race, religion or sexual orientation.