PhD Fellowship in Multilingualism and Cross- linguistic Influence

About this position

The University of Stavanger invites applicants for a position as PhD Fellow in Multilingualism and Cross-linguistic Influence at the Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Culture and Language. The position is available from 01.03.2027.

The PhD fellowship leads to a doctoral degree and gives you the opportunity to develop research expertise in an active and stimulating academic environment. Through the doctoral education, you will acquire knowledge, skills and experience that qualify you for a further career in research, higher education, and other knowledge-intensive sectors.

The successful candidate will be admitted to the PhD programme in Educational Science and Humanities. The programme includes an independent research project culminating in a doctoral thesis, participation in national and international research communities, and the dissemination of research findings. For more information about the PhD education at UiS, please visit

our website.

The position is for three years of pure research training or four years with research training combined with other career-promoting work. The final arrangement will be clarified during the recruitment process.

As a PhD Fellow at UiS, you will receive supervision and support for your academic and professional development through mentoring, skills development, and career planning.

Research Topic

The successful candidate will be affiliated with the research group FLUENT (Multilingual Development and Change in Contemporary Society) and the Department of Culture and Language. FLUENT investigates multilingualism from different perspectives, including language acquisition, formal linguistics, and educational sciences. The research group is interdisciplinary and welcomes a range of theoretical and methodological approaches.

This PhD position is an open call for doctoral projects in multilingualism, with a particular focus on cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in bilingual and multilingual speakers. The overall aim is to increase our understanding of how languages influence one another in the multilingual mind, and to what extent grammatical systems are shared across languages.

Although cross-linguistic influence is a well-established phenomenon, many questions remain unanswered. In particular, more research is needed on how language-specific properties and linguistic distance between languages affect cross-linguistic influence. Further research is also needed on how different types of multilingual speakers (for example, children and adults, early and late bilinguals) and individual factors such as language proficiency, language exposure and language use influence these processes.

Because much previous research has relied on offline methods, such as grammaticality judgment tasks, relatively little is known about how cross-linguistic influence manifests itself while multilingual speakers process language in real time.

The PhD project should contribute new empirical knowledge on cross-linguistic influence using offline, online or combined methodological approaches. Applicants are encouraged to develop their own project within this broad research area.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

the extent to which cross-linguistic influence varies as a function of linguistic distance between languages

the extent to which cross-linguistic influence varies across different linguistic domains, such as syntax, morphology, vocabulary and phonology

the extent to which cross-linguistic influence varies across different types of multilingual speakers, for example children and adults, early and late bilinguals, or third language learners

the extent to which individual factors, such as language proficiency, language exposure and language use, influence cross-linguistic influence

the extent to which cross-linguistic influence manifests itself similarly or differently in multilingual speakers’ linguistic knowledge and in real-time language processing

Projects may investigate a broad range of language combinations. Projects including Norwegian in combination with one or more other languages are particularly encouraged, although projects involving other language combinations are also welcome. Stavanger's multilingual population provides excellent opportunities for recruiting participants with diverse linguistic backgrounds.

The dissertation will be written in English.