PhD Position: Network Neuroscience of Language Donders Centre Cognition

Organisation/Company Radboud University Research Field Language sciences » Linguistics Neurosciences » Neurobiology Neurosciences » Neuroinformatics Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Final date to receive applications 8 Mar 2026 - 22:59 (UTC) Country Netherlands Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Not Applicable Hours Per Week 36.0 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure?

No

Join the ERC project EMERGENCE and explore how language arises from large‑scale brain networks. Work with cutting‑edge neuroimaging, advanced connectomics and an international research community to uncover the neurobiology of human language.
The ERC project investigates language as an emergent property of distributed brain networks, integrating white‑matter connectivity, functional neuroimaging and individual variability. Moving beyond classical localisationist accounts, the project aims to understand how language functions arise from large‑scale network organisation and how these networks differ across individuals.
You will join the ERC Consolidator project EMERGENCE, which investigates how language networks arise from multi‑scale neurobiological variability. The project combines multimodal neuroimaging (structural MRI, diffusion‑weighted imaging, functional MRI), advanced connectomics, and receptor‑enriched modelling to characterise individual differences in language organisation across healthy participants and clinical populations (e.g. stroke, brain tumour and neurodegenerative conditions). You will contribute to data preprocessing, and advanced analysis, including tractography, network modelling and computational approaches to identify latent dimensions of language network organisation.
You will be embedded within the Donders Graduate School and will also participate in the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Language Sciences. This provides access to a structured and interdisciplinary training curriculum, advanced methodological courses, transferable skills workshops, and a vibrant international doctoral community. Within this framework, you will develop and implement reproducible analysis pipelines, contribute to hypothesis generation, collaborate across institutes, and disseminate findings through publications and international conferences.
Your teaching tasks are limited and integrated into the training trajectory, typically amounting to approximately 10% of your working time. These may include supervising Bachelor’s or Master’s theses, assisting in practical courses or tutorials and contributing to guest lectures within relevant programmes at Radboud University.
You will be supervised by Dr Stephanie Forkel (PI) and co‑supervised by senior researchers affiliated with the Donders Institute at Radboud University and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
More information about pursuing a PhD at Radboud University can be found here: working as a PhD candidate .

We are looking for a highly motivated and analytically minded candidate with a strong interest in brain connectivity, quantitative methods and language or cognition.
Essential qualifications

• You have a completed Master’s degree in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, computational linguistics, biomedical engineering, data science or a related discipline.
• You have strong quantitative or analytical skills, or a clear motivation to develop them further.
• You have experience in neuroimaging and brain network analysis.
• You have programming or data-analysis experience (e.g. FSL, Python, MATLAB, R).
• You have an excellent command of spoken and written English.
• You have prior experience with MRI or neuroimaging data.
• You have experience with Python-based scientific computing.
• You have familiarity with multivariate methods, network analysis or machine learning.
• You have interest in language, cognition, and individual variability in brain organisation.

• We will give you a temporary employment contract (1.0 FTE) of 1.5 years, after which your performance will be evaluated. If the…