Job Description
Grade UE07: £41,064- £ 48,822 per annum
College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
Full time: 35 hours per week
Fixed Term: 64 months
The Opportunity
The Linguistics & English Language Department in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences are seeking a full time, fixed term Postdoctoral Researcher. This post is available from 1 st of March 2026.
The successful candidate will work alongside Dr Bert Remijsen and other team members as part of an ERC funded grant “The evolution of suprasegmental morphology in West Nilotic” (Nilomorph). The postdoc will be responsible for conducting descriptive research on the Burun languages within the wider West Nilotic group, resulting in analyses of the sound system and morphosyntax of the target languages. The position involves collaborative research and regular (annual) fieldwork in East Africa throughout the duration of the role.
As a School we acknowledge that people’s career paths are rarely linear and welcome applicants to expand on their professional and personal journeys where appropriate.
Your Skills And Attributes For Success
- Appropriate degree in Linguistics, with relevant post-graduate research and/or teaching experience. Normally a PhD (pending or assumed complete may be considered).
- Extensive expertise in qualitative analysis of the sound system of an understudied language based on data collected first-hand.
- Extensive expertise in qualitative analysis of the morphosyntax of an understudied language based on data collected first-hand.
- Experience with the study of suprasegmental phenomena.
Application Information
Full job description can be found here.
We ask you to include a current CV and cover letter with names of three referees who may be contacted at a later date (please note if you do not wish for anyone to be contacted until
after an offer has been made). We invite candidates to use their cover letter to highlight professional and personal experiences that maybe relevant to role.
More information on how to submit your application can be found here .
Informal enquiries may be made to Dr Bert Remijsen (b.remijsen@ed.ac.uk).
As a valued member of our team you can expect:
- A competitive salary of £41,064- £ 48,822 (pro rata for part time). Annual increments through the scale will occur with each year’s continuous service.
- An exciting, positive, creative, challenging and rewarding place to work.
- To be part of a diverse and vibrant international community.
- Comprehensive Staff Benefits, such as a generous holiday entitlement, a defined benefits pension scheme, staff discounts and family-friendly initiatives. Check out the full list on our staff benefits page and use our reward calculator to discover the total value of your pay and benefits.
Championing Equality, Diversity And Inclusion
The University of Edinburgh holds a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to advance gender equality in higher education. We are members of the Race Equality Charter and we are also Stonewall Scotland Diversity Champions, actively promoting LGBT equality.
Prior to any employment commencing with the University you will be required to evidence your right to work in the UK. Further information is available on our
right to work webpages (opens new browser tab ).
The University may be able to sponsor the employment of international workers in this role. This will depend on a number of factors specific to the successful applicant.
Key Dates To Note
The closing date for applications is
17th December 2025.
Unless stated otherwise the closing time for applications is 11:59pm GMT. If you are applying outside the UK the closing time on our adverts automatically adjusts to your browsers local time zone.
Interviews are expected to be held in January 2026; we aim to give successful candidates 2 weeks’ notice ahead of interviews.
About Us
As a world-leading research-intensive University, we are here to address tomorrow’s greatest challenges. Between now and 2030 we will do that with a values-led approach to teaching, research and innovation, and through the strength of our relationships, both locally and globally.
About The Team
Edinburgh has a lively department of Linguistics and English Language with world-leading research and an enthusiastic and supportive teaching culture. We house 33 academic staff who cover a wide range of topics from the early history of English to speech synthesis. Linguistics at Edinburgh ranks 5th in the world and 2nd in the UK (QS World University Rankings by Subject 2017).
Our research is placed first for Modern Languages and Linguistics in the Times Higher Education rankings of the Research Excellence Framework 2014.
We have two research centres: the Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics, and the Centre for Language Evolution. We are also the founders of Bilingualism Matters, a centre for public engagement, which has 16 branches across Europe and the US. Along with Informatics, Linguistics and English Language is a founder member of the University’s Centre for Speech Technology Research.
Our research specialisms range from syntax, semantics, pragmatics, morphology, phonetics, and phonology to language and identity, variationist sociolinguistics, the linguistics of English, language evolution, language acquisition and development, and language change. We have a well-established and large PhD programme, with many of our PhD graduates going on to successful academic careers. We also offer eight taught MSc programmes and an MSc by Research. Each year, our graduate students organise the Linguistics and English Language Postgraduate Conference, an international event which has run for over 20 years. The department has access to fully-equipped facilities for EEG/ERP and eye-tracking research, and a state-of-the-art recording studio.
Undergraduate teaching, which draws on our well-established research strengths, ranges from first year classes of around 290 students (including a first year intake onto Linguistics or English Language single and joint honours degree programmes of around 150 students) to some 60 students who choose to write their undergraduate dissertations with us. The Linguistics and English Language student society, LangSoc, runs a lively programme of talks and events and is the host of the 2018 conference for Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain (ULAB). As well as our single honours degrees, we offer a wide range of joint honours degrees with subjects including English Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, Social Anthropology and Modern Languages. Our teaching is well-regarded by students and external examiners, and we score highly in the National Student Survey (NSS 2017).
Linguistics and English Language has close ties with Psychology and Philosophy, the other two areas within its home School; beyond the School, the department has links with Edinburgh's renowned Schools of Education and Informatics.
For more information visit https://www.ed.ac.uk/ppls/linguistics-and-english-language
