Two full-time Research Assistants in social learning and cognition (UK)

Two full-time Research Assistant positions are being offered by the University of Stirling to work on a European Research Council (ERC) funded project entitled ‘The Cog in the Ratchet: Illuminating the Cognitive Mechanisms Generating Human Cumulative Culture’. The research team for the project will consist of the PI (Christine Caldwell), two postdoctoral researchers and four PhD students. The current advert is for the two research assistant positions, with the four (4-year) studentships to be advertised later in the project.

The posts are offered as fixed term, full-time appointments for 30 months to start 1 September 2015. After 30 months there will be the potential to extend to five years.

The project will be based at the University of Stirling, and will therefore benefit from outstanding research facilities including the Living Links to Human Evolution Research Centre (http://www.living-links.org/) for nonhuman primate research, and an on-site Playgroup for developmental research.

Research Assistant 1

The main responsibility of this post-holder will be to develop and maintain software for the project, which will be required for testing all populations (nonhuman primates, young children, and adult microsocieties). A key objective of the project involves the development of a novel experimental task for data collection, so this will be the main role of this post-holder. The appointee will also be involved in data collection for laboratory experiments on cultural evolution with adult human participants, which will include running their own studies and supporting the work of PhD students carrying out related research.

Research Assistant 2

The main responsibility of this post-holder will be to carry out comparative and developmental studies of social learning and cognition. It is expected that, in the early stages of the project, this post-holder will carry out extensive pilot work with nonhuman primates and young children, using the experimental task, thus contributing to the development of the eventual data collection protocols for the project as a whole. The appointee will continue to be involved in comparative and developmental research throughout the duration of the project, through completing their own data collection and supporting the work of PhD students carrying out related research.

During the application process, you will be asked to indicate which post(s) you wish to be considered for.

Job number: SCH00484
School/Service: School of Natural Sciences
Location: Stirling Campus
Contract Type: Fixed Term Contract
Working Pattern: Full Time
Salary: Grade 6 £24,775 - £30,434
Closing date: 30-Jun-2015
Interviews are expected to take place on 20 July 2015.

Full details available here:
http://www.stir.ac.uk/about/jobs/details/index.html?id=QUUFK026203F3VBQB7V79V7NE&nPostingID=893&nPostingTargetID=860&mask=extstirling&lg=UK