2 PhD students at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

The Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, is offering two fully-funded PhD student positions in comparative bioacoustics/seal pup vocal development/evolution of speech/music cognition within the newly established Comparative Bioacoustics Group. The host research group, led by Dr. Andrea Ravignani, investigates the evolutionary bases of speech and music, mostly performing (non-invasive) cross-species behavioral research in seals, humans, and other mammals. The group has an international spirit and is open to diverse perspectives and approaches.

The PhD projects will investigate the cognitive, evolutionary and neurobiological bases of speech and musical rhythm in humans, seals and other animals. Research will focus on one, or span several, of the 5 research lines in the Comparative Bioacoustics Group (see for details).
Research lines and questions pursued by the doctoral candidate include:

Data-centred comparative research on rhythm and vocal learning to unveil macroevolutionary patterns across species relevant to human speech and music;
Empirical work in seal bioacoustics, targeting how seal pups develop their vocal learning (‘speech-like’) and rhythmic (turn-taking) capacities, possibly like human babies;
Wet-lab research on the comparative neurobiology and vocal tract anatomy in marine mammals;
Understanding the biological bases, cultural variability, and cultural transmission processes underlying the human rhythmicity in music;
Building mathematical and computational models to understand rhythmic and interactive communication in humans and other animals.
These research strands will be pursued with a wide range of methods including (but not limited to) sound recordings, behavioral methods, neuroimaging, neuroanatomy, EEG, vocal tract anatomy, spirometry, and computational modeling, depending on the nature of the project and the candidate's interest.
Potential day-to-day activities for the doctoral candidate include:

Performing seasonal projects with off-site animal facilities; in particular, performing (noninvasive) hands-on animal research with seal pups;
Running large-scale cross-species analyses using already available data;
Running lab-based, web-based and citizen-science studies with human adults;
Reviewing the published literature relevant to the doctoral project;
Data processing and data analysis;
Participating in scientific dissemination activities;
Selecting and supervising interns and master students, who may also help with data collection for the doctoral project