Postdoc Cow Language - Meertens

Locatie:  Amsterdam
Max uren per week: 0,90
Max salaris: 6.148
Duur overeenkomst: 34 maanden
Solliciteer t/m: 05-01-2025

The Meertens Institute of KNAW Humanities Cluster is looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher (0.9 fte, 34 months) for the NWO-M project Towards an Animal Turn in Sociolinguistics. Understanding the dairy cow’s interaction with humans and with each other. The guiding question is how do dairy cows mutually and with humans imbue their intraspecies and interspecies interaction with meaning that makes sense for both species. A focus on dairy cows addresses two urgent research problems in sociolinguistics in the era of climate change and loss of biodiversity: first, how to decentre the human both theoretically and methodologically in linguistics, especially within the strongly asymmetrical dairy cow and human power relations in human dominated dairy production, and second, how to fill the gap of knowledge in (socio)linguistics about the animal’s sociality and interactional meaning-making. The project aims to address the general question whether pivotal patterns in human communication like deixis, question formation and modality also play a role in human-nonhuman animal communication, specifically when humans and other animals interact bodily including vocalization in a situated context. We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher with a background in (all disciplines of) linguistics such as sociolinguistics, phonetics, phonology, syntax, multimodal analysis, CA, linguistic anthropology etc.

What you will be doing

You will work as postdoctoral researcher in an interdisciplinary team of researchers. Your research will focus on how to develop an inclusive (socio)linguistics that studies interactions as embodied, - including sound production-, and sensory phenomena between cows, and between cows and humans in a wide context. You will possibly engage in ethnographic fieldwork observing dairy cows and/or with existing video recordings of interspecies and intraspecies dairy cow interactions. You will be able to co-supervise the junior researcher in this project and assist in management tasks in the project. The postdoctoral position will be mentored by Prof. Dr. Leonie Cornips.

To apply, we expect the candidate to write a research proposal that fits within the overall framework of the Cow Language project. Inspiration can be drawn from the references below. Close collaboration with other linguists interested is a prerequisite.

References (open access)

• Cornips, Leonie. 2024. The semiotic repertoire of the dairy cow(s). Language in Society https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/semiotic-repertoire-of-dairy-cows/4306465A4AFF74B4BFBDB4C2E63B845F
• Cornips, Leonie & Marjo van Koppen. 2024. Multimodal dairy cow – human interaction in an intensive farming context. Language Sciences vol. 101, 101587. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101587
• Cornips, Leonie. 2024. How (dairy) cows and humans intertwine languaging practices: recurrent vocalizations are not the same. Language as an ecological phenomenon. Languaging and bioecologies in human-environment relationships, ed. by Sune Vork Steffensen, Martin Döring, and Stephen Cowley, p. 29-53. London: Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/language-as-an-ecological-phenomenon-9781350304505/ (to be found at Researchgate)
• Cornips Leonie. 2022. The animal turn in postcolonial (socio)linguistics: the interspecies greeting of the dairy cow. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 6:210-232. https://iacpl.net/jopol/issues/jopol6/the-animal-turn-in-postcolonial-linguistics/

What you will be contributing

- you will participate in a research team that engages in ethnographic multispecies fieldwork

- you will do research within the scope of the Cow Language project, publishing peer-reviewed papers and presenting lectures at (inter)national conferences.

- you have a PhD in Linguistics.

- You have a working proficiency of Dutch and English.

- You will physically be based at the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam. Remote work is a possibility, but you are expected to be able to be present at the Institute regularly.

What we are offering

You will be working at the Meertens Institute, a research institute of the Humanities Cluster of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Meertens Institute studies how collective linguistic and cultural identities are constructed, and how these processes are shaped through embodiment and cognition. In both societal and academic debates on these topics the Meertens Institute aims to play a leading role. During the project you will be able to further develop your research interests.

Application procedure

Please submit a CV, cover letter that includes a motivation on why you want to work on this project and a 2-page research statement in which you outline how you foresee your contribution to the project, both in terms of our own research as well as how your research and expertise would contribute to the project in its entirety.

Thus to apply, please submit:

• Cover letter
• Research proposal (max. 1000 words + bibliography)
• CV
• Writing sample, e.g. a published paper or a thesis chapter
• 2 names and contact details of referees (no letters of recommendation required)

Please send all documents to by January 5, 2025.  Interviews will take place in the third week of January  2025.

For more information

Please contact: Prof. Dr. Leonie Cornips, principal investigator of the Cow Language project and senior researcher at the Meertens Institute / NL Lab.

Over Meertens
Het Meertens Instituut is een onderzoeksinstituut van de KNAW. Dit instituut houdt zich bezig met de bestudering en documentatie van Nederlandse taal en cultuur. Centraal staan de verschijnselen die het alledaagse leven in onze samenleving vormgeven. De collecties van het Meertens Instituut vormen een belangrijk onderdeel van de nationale geesteswetenschappelijke infrastructuur.

Arbeidsvoorwaarden
Het salaris bedraagt afhankelijk van opleiding en ervaring minimaal 4.492 en maximaal 6.148 bruto per maand bij een full time dienstverband (schaal 11 cao Nederlandse Universiteiten/KNAW) . Dit is exclusief 8% vakantiegeld, 8,3% eindejaarsuitkering, reiskostenvergoeding, internet- en thuiswerkvergoeding en pensioenopbouw bij het ABP.

De KNAW biedt haar medewerkers een uitstekend pakket aan secundaire arbeidsvoorwaarden. Een pakket dat voorziet in de verschillende behoeften die medewerkers afhankelijk van hun levensfase, levenswijze of loopbaanambities hebben. Zo is het mogelijk om door wekelijks twee uur per week extra te werken het aantal vakantiedagen van 29 tot 41 dagen per jaar (bij fulltime dienstverband) uit te breiden.

Voor een volledig overzicht van de arbeidsvoorwaarden wordt verwezen naar de webpagina: werken bij de KNAW.

Het aanvragen van een VOG kan onderdeel uitmaken van de indiensttredingsprocedure.

Diversiteit & Inclusie
De KNAW acht een werkomgeving waarin iedereen zich welkom en gewaardeerd voelt van groot belang. Een werkomgeving waarin aandacht is voor individuele kwaliteit en waar ontwikkelmogelijkheden voorop staan. Samen streven we naar een inclusieve cultuur waarin we verschillen omarmen. We nodigen dan ook graag kandidaten uit die door hun achtergrond en ervaring hieraan een bijdrage willen leveren. Bij gelijke geschiktheid gaat de voorkeur uit naar de kandidaat die de diversiteit binnen de KNAW op deze wijze versterkt.

Acquisitie naar aanleiding van deze advertentie wordt niet op prijs gesteld.