Two PhD candidates in Descriptive/Documentary Linguistics in Indonesia Leiden University in Netherlands

Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), part of the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University, is recruiting two fully funded PhD candidates for the NWO project Usku and Banda: Automated Documentation of Endangered Languages of Eastern Indonesia.

The positions focus on two small, unwritten, endangered languages in eastern Indonesia: Usku (also called Afra), a Papuan isolate spoken in Papua, and Banda, an Austronesian language spoken on Kei Besar in Maluku. The research combines language documentation, descriptive linguistics, fieldwork, corpus building, lexicography, and grammatical analysis. The PhD researchers will work with speaker communities to collect audio-visual data, create transcribed and annotated text collections, compile word lists and lexicons, and analyze phonology, morphology, and syntax.

An additional feature of the project is the evaluation of AI-based tools for automated transcription, translation, morphological segmentation, and glossing of underdocumented languages. The successful candidates will contribute to a wider collaborative project involving PI Prof. Dr. Marian Klamer, external partner Dr. Eline Visser (Uppsala University), and research engineer Dr. Sophie Villerius.

The appointment is for four years and is expected to begin between February and July 2027, by mutual agreement. The salary ranges from €3,204 gross per month in the first year to €4,051 gross per month in the fourth year, plus holiday and year-end allowances. Candidates from outside the Netherlands may be eligible for a tax benefit under Dutch rules.

Applicants should hold a completed Master’s degree in linguistics by the start date and should have a strong interest in language documentation, field linguistics, or descriptive linguistics. Excellent academic English is required, and applicants should have working knowledge of Indonesian or be willing to learn it during the first six months of the project. Experience with fieldwork in non-Western contexts is advantageous, and candidates from Indonesia may be preferred where suitability is equal.

The position is based in Leiden, with fieldwork in Indonesia. Applications must be submitted by 25 October 2026 via the university application system. Required documents include a cover letter naming the preferred project, a full academic CV, transcripts of Bachelor and Master modules, a writing sample, and the names and email addresses of two referees. Interviews are expected in the first half of November 2026.

This is an excellent opportunity for candidates interested in endangered languages, documentary linguistics, and computational support for language documentation within a strong international research environment.