The 2025 application round for the PhD Program International Doctorate for Experimental Approaches to Language And Brain (IDEALAB) is now open!
We are seeking highly motivated and outstanding candidates with a background in Speech and Language Pathology, Psycho- or Neurolinguistics, Clinical Linguistics, or other language-related fields. This year, we are advertising 10 projects (see titles below) and are also welcoming open-topic applications.
IDEALAB provides a rigorous, laboratory-based 3-year doctoral training program focused on the structure, processing, and foundations of language, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches. Candidates conduct original and independent research on experimental and clinical aspects of language and the brain.
Throughout their candidature, candidates are supervised by faculty from at least two of the four participating universities and spend time at both institutions: Universities of Potsdam (GER), Groningen (NL), Newcastle (UK) and Macquarie University (AUS). IDEALAB offers a joint curriculum and research training program, including summer and winter schools, and cumulates in a joint degree.
Starting dates: September 2025 – January 2026
Duration: 3 years
Advertised projects:
- Neurocognitive investigation of reading aloud vs silently and their effects on memory retention
- Infant precursors of reading skills: visual-phonetic mappings and neural phase tracking
- Language processing: The effect of time/cognitive load in different linguistic domains using off-line and on-line measures
- Speech-music therapy and multilingualism
- The impact of accent familiarity on film subtitle processing
- The impact of textual enhancement in subtitled videos on reading and language development
- Leveraging simultaneous interpreters’ neural networks for hearing difficulties
- Characterizing speech motor control across age
- Motor learning in speech and other domains in patients with Parkinson’s disease Speech: a dynamical perspective
- We also welcome open-topic applications
Application deadline: 19 January 2025