PhD student in Linguistics Ghent University, Department of Linguistics Belgium

Job description

Applicants are invited to apply for a full-time, four-year fellowship to study communicative variation in Greek lexicology. An important area of linguistic change in the Post-classical period concerns words and their meaning. Whereas documentary texts form one of the main sources for lexicological study, they have received rela­tively little attention so far. Rather than compiling a new lexicon of the papyri, the project will concentrate on a number of functional domains. As a PhD candidate, you will have two main tasks: (i) to analyze which ‘new’ words come into use in these functional areas, how they are formed, and which specific meanings they have, and (ii) to analyze which ‘old’ words are used with new meanings that are relevant to these domains. In addition to these two major goals, you will investigate the connection between lexemes and their social context. The successful applicants will be expected to hand in and defend a doctoral thesis after four years of research. They will also be expected to actively contribute to the scholarly activities of the research group (such as annotating the EVWRIT-database, organizing conferences, participating in joint publications, etc.). They should come and live in Belgium, and work closely together with the other team members, contributing to a pleasant and stimulating atmosphere.

Profile of the candidate

Applicants are expected to hold a master’s degree in Classics or in a related discipline (e.g. Ancient History or Linguistics). In order to be eligible, applicants must have obtained their degree at the time of application or demonstrate convincingly that they will have that degree in hand by the summer of 2018. A strong command of Ancient Greek is essential, as well as the ability to apply a (historical) sociolinguistic methodology to a corpus of texts from Antiquity. An acquaintance with other Ancient languages, the diachrony of Ancient Greek, and/or papyrology will be considered an asset. Applicants should be fluent in English, and have good reading skills of the other languages relevant to the field (German, French, Italian).

How to apply

Applications should include (i) a cover letter outlining background and motivation, (ii) a writing sample (max. 10.000 words), (iii) two letters of recommendation, and (iv) a detailed CV. Applicants are invited to submit these documents (preferably as one pdf-file) to Klaas.Bentein@UGent.Be. The deadline for submission is June 1, 2018. A selected number of applicants will be invited for an interview in Ghent or a skype interview on June 11, 2018. The starting date is October 1, 2018, or soon after. For inquiries, please contact prof. dr. Klaas Bentein at the above-mentioned e-mail address. For more information, see http://www.evwrit.ugent.be/job-opening/.