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Department of Comparative Language Science

PhD student in population genomics and linguistic evolution

The NCCR Evolving Language (www.evolvinglanguage.ch) invites applications for a PhD student in population genomics and linguistic evolution to study human language diversification from the viewpoints of the spread of humans and cultural (archaeological and ethnographical traits) at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Zurich.


The NCCR is a Swiss National Center of Competence in Research with the goal of creating a new discipline, Evolutionary Language Science, that targets the past and future of language. The center consists of leading scientists from traditionally separated academic domains, which allows us to harvest the diverse expertise from the humanities, social sciences, computational sciences, natural sciences and medicine towards a broadscale interdisciplinary collaboration.

The similarity of the genetic and linguistic evolution was pointed out by Charles Darwin. In the first
phase of the NCCR, we found that both match and mismatch are common world-wide using the database of genomic and linguistic data GeLaTo (GEnes and LAnguage TOgether) (Barbieri et al. PNAS 2023, click for the press release) as well as local case studies (Matsumae et al. Science Advance 2021, Arango- Isaza et al. Curr Biol 2023, Padilla-Iglesias et al. Nature Human Behaviour, 2023).

In the second phase, we plan to strengthen population genetic analysis including demographic analysis and between-population tracking of cultural and linguistic exchange using genetic markers to study the evolution of languages and human bio-cultural diversification. This project is a part of the "Population History" Task in the Work Package Stationarity of the NCCR which is lead by Prof. Andrea Migliano (Department of Evolutionary Anthropology) (Main PI .of this position, https://www.migliano-uzh.com/), Prof. Kentaro Shimizu, Prof. Balthasar Bickel (Department of Comparative Language Science), and a planned new professor in genetics of language, in collaboration with Prof. Chiara Barbieri (University of Cagliari) and further members of the NCCR.

The position is for four years, mainly funded by the NCCR Evolving Language and supplemented by
additional sources.

Your responsibilities

  • Be an active participant of the Human Evolutionary Ecology Group (Department of Evolutionary Anthropology).
  • Collaborate with different people from the NCCR to Develop a cross department project integrating ideas from evolutionary anthropology, language evolution and genomics.
  • Collect data on one or more small scale societies to analyse the correlations and  mismatches between language, genetic and cultural evolution.
  • Learn statistics in R, as well and the appropriate genetics and linguistic analyses to complete your chapters.
  • Produce at least 3 result chapters by the end of your PhD.
  • Teach according to the number of hours stipulated by the Department of Evolutionary Antropology.

Your profile

  • Good team player, interest in collaborating with other team members, strong interest in human evolution, curiosity and flexibility to explore a scientific topic from different angles.
  • A masters degree in biology (genetics, evolution, ecology) or comparative/evolutionary linguistics, with a strong interest in Human Evolution.
  • Experience in quantitive analyses and interest in fieldwork with hunter-gatherer groups will be an asset.

What we offer

UZH offers excellent opportunities and strong support for career development. Salaries are internationally competitive. Link: Salary ranges, guidelines for employees in SNSF-funded projects
The initial contract is for 1 year and renewable up to 4 years of the project timeframe.
We take gender balance and diversity seriously in our hiring decisions.

Location

Department of Evolutionary Anthropology

Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland

Start of employment

We will begin reviewing applications middle of September 2024 and seek to fill the position by October 2024.

Application procedure

Please submit your application including your past research achievements, a letter of motivation that highlights your interests, your CV and two or more contacts for reference (or reference letters) and one or two samples of your Masters work in a single PDF via Jobs UZH.