4 Postdoctoral researchers and 4PhD positions, NWO-sponsored Horizon
project: ‘Knowledge and Culture’

The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) will be funding the Horizon research project ‘Knowledge and Culture’. This project will be carried out as a collaboration between the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), the Leiden University Centre for Arts in Society (LUCAS), the Meertens Institute (KNAW), and the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Prof. dr Johan Rooryck at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) of the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University will be coordinating the research project. For more information, please see the full description of the project at http://www.hum.leiden.edu/lucl/job-opportunities/vacancies-at-leiden-university.html

Knowledge and culture:
In various domains of cognitive science, a new paradigm holds that humans and non-human animals are born with a small set of hard-wired cognitive abilities that are task-specific, language independent, and non-species-specific. These core knowledge systems are innate cognitive skills that have the capacity for building mental representations of objects, persons, spatial relationships, numerosity, and social interaction. In addition to core knowledge systems, humans possess species-specific, uniquely human abilities such as language and music. The ‘core knowledge’ paradigm challenges scholars in the humanities to ask the question  how nurture and culture build on nature. This project examines the way in which innate, non specifically human, core knowledge systems for object representation, number, and geometry constrain cultural expressions in music, language, and the visual arts. In this research program, four domains of the humanities will be investigated from the point of view of core knowledge: (1) music cognition; (2) language and number; (3) visual arts and geometry; (4) poetry, rhythm, and meter.

8 positions in 4 subprojects:
Subproject 1: Music cognition
teamleader: Prof.dr H. Honing (UvA)
1PhD student in music cognition
1 Postdoctoral researcher in music cognition/ linguistics

Subproject 2: Language and Number
teamleader: Prof.dr S. Barbiers (Meertens Institute/ UU)
1PhD student in linguistics or cognitive science
1 Postdoctoral researcher in linguistics

Subproject 3: Visual Arts and Geometry
teamleaders: Prof.dr.ir M. Delbeke (UGent) & Prof.dr C. van Eck (UL)
1PhD student in art history
1 Postdoctoral researcher in art history

Subproject 4: Poetry, rhythm, and meter
teamleader: Prof.dr M. van Oostendorp (Meertens Institute/ UL)
1PhD student in metrics
1 Postdoctoral researcher in metrics