Postdoctoral Research Associate

About the Role

The School of the Arts is seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Research Associate to work with Dr Kathleen McCarthy (QMUL) and Dr Laura Shapiro (Aston University) on the ESRC-funded project ‘Developing a language-specific approach to understanding early language acquisition in New-to-English children’.

The postholder will support the design and delivery of a longitudinal study of early language and literacy development in New-to-English children in multilingual contexts, including study protocols, assessment materials and data collection workflows. The role will involve linguistic description and cross-linguistic comparison of the target languages and English to support language-specific assessments and related research materials, alongside school- and community-based research activity, including recruitment, data collection, and quantitative analysis of longitudinal data, including developmental trajectory modelling.

The role will contribute to the project’s impact work, including school-facing materials and resources with partner organisations to inform support for New-to-English children in educational settings.

The post is a part-time, fixed-term appointment for 24 months, with an expected start on 01 September 2026 to 31 August 2028 and is available due to research funding. The salary will be £38,419 - £46,618 per annum (pro rata for a 0.6 FTE post), inclusive of London allowance.

About You

You will hold a PhD (or close to completion) in Linguistics or a related discipline. You will have experience in child language development, multilingualism, psycholinguistics, or related areas.

You should have experience contributing to research projects, including design and delivery, and working with complex language data. Experience of quantitative analysis and experimental design is essential, and experience of collecting and analysing longitudinal data would be valuable.

Experience of child language assessment development and language description would be desirable.

The role requires excellent organisational and communication skills, and ability to work independently and collaboratively in a research team. Experience of working with schools and families is essential. Experience of multilingual communities and community partners would be advantageous. The successful candidate will also need to work accurately, maintain secure research records, and engage professionally with stakeholders.

About the School

Further details about the School can be found here.

About Queen Mary

At Queen Mary University of London, we believe that a diversity of ideas helps us achieve the previously unthinkable.

Throughout our history, we’ve fostered social justice and improved lives through academic excellence. And we continue to live and breathe this spirit today, not because it’s simply ‘the right thing to do’ but for what it helps us achieve and the intellectual brilliance it delivers.

We continue to embrace diversity of thought and opinion in everything we do, in the belief that when views collide, disciplines interact, and perspectives intersect, truly original thought takes form.

Benefits

We offer competitive salaries, access to a generous pension scheme, 30 days’ leave per annum (pro-rata for part-time/fixed-term), a season ticket loan scheme and access to a comprehensive range of personal and professional development opportunities. In addition, we offer a range of work life balance and family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, and campus facilities.

Queen Mary’s commitment to our diverse and inclusive community is embedded in our appointments processes. Reasonable adjustments will be made at each stage of the recruitment process for any candidate with a disability. We are open to considering applications from candidates wishing to work flexibly.