Practical information to applicants for PhD position in Language Technology

PhD position (Third cycle)

The starting date for the PhD employment is 1 september 2025, or as soon as possible after this date, by negotiation, and the funding is available for four years of full-time PhD work. The content and scope follows the general syllabus for a PhD degree inLanguage technology (pdf). General and specific admittance requirements are described below under “Eligibility”. PhD salaries follow a fixed pay scale set by the university. PhD positions are regular salaried positions, meaning that PhD candidates should spend the major part of their working hours in the department, in order to be able to actively interact with the research environment in the best possible way.

Application

The application must be made online in the University of Gothenburg’s web-based Job Application Portal. For technical support concerning the Job Application Portal, please contact rekrytering@gu.se.

(1) Application letter. This should include a brief account of your reasons for applying to this position. Here you may also list any relevant information not naturally provided elsewhere. If you submit co-authored publications, your contribution to these should be stated here.

(2) CV. Your CV should briefly include the following information, preferably using the same labels as listed below:

• Personal information – name, contact details.
• Education – degrees, institutions, dates.
• Research interests – brief description of research areas.
• (optional) Work experience – academic and relevant positions.
• (optional) Publications – articles, books, chapters.
• Technical skills and language skills
• (optional) Other relevant information.

(3) Grades and certificates. You must enclose an attested educational certificate listing the courses you have completed, including their extent. The certificate must show that you meet the general admittance requirements for postgraduate study as well as the specific admittance requirements specified in the syllabus for PhD studies in Language technology (both described below under “Eligibility”). If you do not meet these requirements, a separate document must be enclosed, where you clearly state on what grounds your qualifications can be said to correspond to the general and specific admittance requirements. Educational certificates in other languages than English, Swedish, Danish or Norwegian must be accompanied by a certified translation into one of these languages.

(4) Thesis and publications. Enclose relevant publications in support of your application. In addition to any peer-reviewed conference and journal publications, you may include advanced-level theses. Up to five publications can be enclosed; bibliographic information on any additional publications can be listed in the application letter. In order to be considered by the evaluators, the publications must be written in English, Swedish, Danish or Norwegian. Note that the full texts themselves must be uploaded, not abstracts or URLs. The document format must be pdf without any kind of password protection.

(5) Project description

You must enclose an independently written description (3–7 pages) of a research project which could be suitable as your PhD project (written in English, Swedish, Danish or Norwegian). The document format must be pdf without any kind of password protection.

Your project description should present a specific research question, together with a theoretically and methodologically grounded discussion motivating why this particular question merits investigation.

It should contain a brief survey of the research field presenting previous research and how your own proposed project relates to this research, in particular how your project will build on this earlier research and in what way it is expected to advance the field. It should further contain a methodology and data section where you discuss data requirements and availability, as well as the tools and analytical techniques with which you intend to address your research question, as well as any relevant ethical considerations. The project description may also contain a preliminary thesis outline and a commented rough time plan for the project.

The project description should be written in such a way that the points listed above are treated as elements of a structurally and logically coherent argument where the initial formulation of your research question serves as a foundation for everything that follows.

The project description will be assessed based on the following criteria: (a) knowledge of the relevant state-of-the art; (b) relevance of the research question(s) for the proposed topic and its state-of-the art; (c) adequacy of the suggested methods for the research question(s) addressed in the project description; and (d) feasibility to carry out the proposed project within the period of the doctoral studies.

The project description is intended as evidence of the applicant’s ability to plan and motivate a more substantial research project. It may (but need not) be realized as the actual PhD project of the chosen candidate.

The research in Language Technology in the department is conducted in our language technology research unit Språkbanken Text (the Text division of the Swedish Language Bank; https://spraakbanken.gu.se/en/ ), and, as characteristic of language technology research, each research project normally involves a group of researchers, including PhD candidates. Your project description should make clear how your research question could connect to ongoing research in Språkbanken Text. See https://spraakbanken.gu.se/en/research and https://spraakbanken.gu.se/en/research/publications for an overview of the research activities. See also hhttps://spraakbanken.gu.se/en/research/phd-program. If other individuals have been involved in the development of your project description, even if only in an advisory capacity, the nature and extent of their involvement must be stated explicitly and contact information provided for the person(s) involved.

For technical support concerning the Job Application Portal, please contact rekrytering@gu.se. Questions concerning the PhD program in NLP and the research unit where the PhD studies are conducted may be directed to our PhD coordinators at sb-phd-info@svenska.gu.se. General questions about PhD studies and the application process can also be directed to the associate head of department for doctoral studies, Stina Ericsson: stina.ericsson@svenska.gu.se.

Eligibility

General admission requirements

To meet the basic admission requirements of PhD programs at the University of Gothenburg, applicants must have obtained a second-cycle degree, have completed studies of at least 240 higher education credits of which at least 60 credits were awarded in the second-cycle, have completed a corresponding programme in some other country or be able to demonstrate the possession of equivalent qualifications.

Specific admission requirements, Language technology

At least 30 credits from second-cycle courses in Computational linguistics, Language technology, or Natural language processing, including a thesis of at least 15 credits

or

At least 30 credits from second-cycle courses in linguistics, including a thesis of at least 15 credits, plus at least 30 credits from first-level courses in Language technology, Computational linguistics, Natural language processing, or Computer science.

or

At least 30 credits from second-cycle courses in Computer science, including a thesis of at least 15 credits, plus at least 30 credits from first-level courses in linguistics.

Applicants must have good written and oral proficiency in English. Knowledge of Swedish is not a requirement.

Evaluation and ranking of applications

The project description and enclosed publications will be evaluated in accordance with the Higher Education Ordinance (Chapter 7 § 39) and consider relevance and originality of the research question(s) and feasibility of the research project. Both the general background and specific qualifications of the applicants will be taken into account in the evaluation, as well as the availability of sufficient thesis advising capacity in the department for the PhD project.

A preliminary decision and evaluations of applicants will be communicated to the applicants at latest by 15 May 2025.