"Research Assistant"

University of Leeds - School of Languages, Cultures and Societies

Location: Leeds

Salary: £33,951 to £39,906 per annum

Hours: Full Time

Contract Type: Fixed-Term/Contract

Placed On: 24th October 2025

Closes: 20th November 2025

Job Ref: AHCLC1240

Are you an ambitious researcher looking for your next challenge?

Do you possess a Master Degree in Computational Linguistics or related area? Do you have a keen desire to further our understanding of Natural Language Processing? Are you committed to Open Science? Do you want to further your career in one of the UK’s leading research intensive Universities?

Project: iDem, Inclusive Democratic Spaces for Deliberation and Participation

iDEM aims at addressing the barriers in deliberative and participatory democratic practices by using natural language processing methods as enablers in addressing political inequality for deliberation and participation in democratic spaces. In collaboration with other EU partners, we will develop techniques to detect difficult words and constructions in the texts of the target domain and for the target audiences by means of fine-tuning large language models. The research objective for this task is aimed at addressing the following problems: (i) the need to transfer prediction models across different user groups and domains, often with small amounts of training data; (ii) the need to deal with multiple languages; and (iii) the need to combine heterogeneous levels of annotation on the levels of words, passages, sentences or texts, often with noise and inconsistent annotations. We will also focus on experimenting with explainable AI, so that the classifiers can provide explanations to ensure that the right choices are made for the right reasons.

What we offer in return

• 26 days holiday plus 16 Bank Holidays/days that the University is closed by custom (including Christmas) – That is over 40 days a year!
• Generous pension scheme – the University contributes 21.6% of salary
• Health and Wellbeing: Discounted staff membership options at The Edge, our state-of-the-art Campus gym, with a pool, sauna, climbing wall, cycle circuit, and sports halls.
• Personal Development: Access to courses run by our Organisational Development & Professional Learning team, and self-development courses including languages, Creative Writing, Wellbeing Therapies and much more.
• Access to on-site childcare, shopping discounts and travel schemes are also available.

And much more!

If you are looking for a role that will challenging and fast paced apply today.

To explore the post further or for any queries you may have, please contact:

Serge Sharoff – Professor of Language Technology; s.sharoff@leeds.ac.uk