The University of Helsinki, founded in 1640, is one of the best multidisciplinary research universities in the world. The University of Helsinki is an international academic community of 40,000 students and staff members. Its Faculty of Arts (https://www.helsinki.fi/en/faculty-of-arts) is Finland’s oldest and largest unit of teaching and research in the arts in terms of the structure and selection of its disciplines. The Faculty is also a significant international community of research, education, and culture.

The Faculty of Arts of the University of Helsinki invites applications for the position of

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER
in Computational Dialectology

for a period of two years, starting on October 1, 2021. There is a possibility to continue for another two years in the second phase of the project.

Note: Under certain circumstances, this position may be converted into a four-year position for a doctoral candidate. Please contact Yves Scherrer (yves.scherrer@helsinki.fi) for further details about this possibility.

The successful candidate will conduct research in the context of the project "CorCoDial - Corpus-based computational dialectology: exploiting machine translation techniques to extract, visualize and interpret dialectal patterns" under the supervision of University Lecturer Yves Scherrer.

The project follows recent trends in dialectology to focus on corpus-based rather than questionnaire-based or atlas-based approaches. We propose a new take on corpus-based dialectology that relies on state-of-the-art machine translation techniques to improve normalization and extract dialectal patterns. The methods will be applied both to existing dialect corpora and to social media data collections from various language areas.

Candidates should hold a doctoral degree (or will shortly satisfy the requirement of a PhD) in a field related to computational linguistics, corpus linguistics, dialectology, or data science with a specialization on language. Experience with machine translation, statistical methods and/or visualization of linguistic data is a key advantage for the position. The selected candidate is expected to:

- Collect, compile and process dialect corpora and social media corpora
- Develop and evaluate normalization models
- Carry out dialectological and dialectometrical analyses based on features extracted from normalization models
- Develop interactive visualizations and publish results
- Dedicate 5-10% of their working time to teaching and supervision within their field of expertise.

The position is based in Helsinki. Our offices are located right in the beautiful center of Helsinki, within walking distance of the seafront and parks. The project is affiliated with the language technology group in the Department of Digital Humanities. The LT research group (https://blogs.helsinki.fi/language-technology/) comprises 20+ international researchers with diverse backgrounds in computer science, linguistics and other fields of digital humanities. Our research is supported by an excellent computational infrastructure.

The salary will be based on level 5 of the job requirement scheme for teaching and research staff in the salary system of Finnish universities. In addition, a salary component based on personal performance will be paid. The annual gross salary range will be approx. 40 000€ – 50 000€, depending on the appointee’s qualifications and experience. Standard Finnish pension benefits and occupational health care are provided for University employees. The employment contract will include a probationary period of six months. For further information on the University of Helsinki as an employer, please see https://www.helsinki.fi/en/about-us/careers.

We welcome applications until August 26, 2021 with the following required attachments:

- A motivation letter that includes a short description of how the applicant’s research interests fit with the position, and of the languages and/or datasets that the applicant wishes to work in priority (1-3 pages)
- A curriculum vitae
- A list of publications with up to five key publications highlighted (please only send copies of the publications themselves if they are not publicly available)
- The PhD degree certificate (or documentation of public defense permission)
- Contact information of one referee who would be available to provide a reference on demand

Please submit your application using the University of Helsinki Recruitment System via the link Apply for job. Applicants who are employees of the University of Helsinki are requested to submit their application via the SAP HR portal.

For further information about the position, please contact Yves Scherrer, yves.scherrer@helsinki.fi.