Vacancy for an

European Commission Funded

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in:

 

The Evolutionary Anatomy of Speech

 

 

Slary Scale: Grade 7 (from £25,633 to £31,525 plus £2,472 London Allowance, according to previous experience)

 

Duration: 2 years

 

Application Deadline: 9^th February 2007

 

 

Contents:

HANDTOMOUTH.. 2

The AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity (AHRC CECD) 3

The Post 4

Job Description.. 5

Person Specification.. 6

Salary. 7

Applications. 7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HANDTOMOUTH, AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity, Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY. Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 4607, Fax: +44 (0)20 7383 2572 http://www.handtomouth.ucl.ac.uk/
Funded by:		Supported by:

Overview

 

The successful applicant will work in collaboration with osteologists and speech engineers, and will have specific responsibility for estimating parameters for the vocal tracts of extinct hominins (to constrain software models of articulatory capacity and articulatory output). The successful applicant will also participate fully in the scientific meetings of the larger HANDTOMOUTH consortium. This Post-Doctoral Fellowship offers the opportunity to work in an exciting interdisciplinary environment, on issues that are fundamental for understanding human evolution and human uniqueness.

 

 

HANDTOMOUTH Project Goals

 

HANDTOMOUTH is a new three-year consortium project, funded under the European Commission’s FP6 NEST Pathfinder initiative ‘What it means to be human’. Scientific sub-projects will focus on evolutionary aspects of speech physiology, and comparative approaches to action observation and action generation. Work will be carried out by investigators at University College London, England (Dr James Steele, Dr Dietrich Stout); the University of Southampton, England (Dr Anna Barney); CNRS, Paris, France (Dr Agnes Roby-Brami); EHESS, Paris, France (Dr Blandine Bril); and the University of Parma (Dr Leo Fogassi). The overall scientific co-ordinator is Dr James Steele.

 

HANDTOMOUTH develops a framework for understanding archaeological and fossil evidence for the evolution of speech and manual dexterity. We focus on low-order parameters which can potentially be assessed in fossil and archaeological evidence. The focus will be on motor control in complex, serially ordered, goal-directed movements, with two sub-themes:

 

Speech production. This will include physical and digital modelling of vocal tracts of extinct hominins based on anatomical parameters, to recover the range of articulatory manoeuvres and acoustic characteristics. There will also be a comparative anatomical study of primate cranial nerves, which will address a neural substrate for speech motor control and sensory feedback regulation.

 

Tool use. This will address the relationship between action understanding and the self-generation of action sequences in human and non-human primates. It will include behavioural analysis of the action recognition system of nonhuman primates in sequentially complex action observation tasks, and kinematic analysis of movement control in stone tool-making and other tool-using tasks in healthy and apraxic human subjects.

 

As a unifying framework, we intend to re-evaluate the possibility that speech may have evolved from an underlying substrate regulating socially-learned tool use, reflecting shared features of neural architecture. We will identify possible areas of convergence and/or homology in behavioural organization and in neural architecture in the two systems. HANDTOMOUTH will enable us to evaluate the extent to which their parallel evolution towards greater complexity in humans was necessary or contingent (and with a better understanding of the evidential controls).

 

 

For further information, please refer to the project web site: http://www.handtomouth.ucl.ac.uk

 

 

 

 

The AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity (AHRC CECD)

 

The AHRC CECD has offices within University College London (UCL) at the Institute of Archaeology, with Principal Investigators at UCL in the Departments of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Biology. Other Principal Investigators are based in the Universities of British Columbia, Durham, Edinburgh, and St Andrews.

 

University College London and the Institute of Archaeology

 

University College London (UCL) is a multi-faculty college of the University of London with a population of over 17,000 students, from more than 130 different countries. Degree programmes are provided in Arts and Humanities, Social and Historical Sciences, Architecture, Building, Environmental Design and Planning, Laws, Life Sciences and Clinical Sciences (including Medicine), Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Engineering Sciences.

 

The Institute of Archaeology, UCL is recognised as one of the leading academic departments of Archaeology not just in the UK but globally. The Institute is the largest department of Archaeology in the UK, with the largest graduate research community, and the broadest range of coverage in the field, of any UK department, and offers a uniquely stimulating environment for the study of all fields of archaeology.

 

The AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity (AHRC CECD)

 

As a world leader in its field, the AHRC CECD aims to advance understanding of human cultural diversity. It is a collaborative institution involving a large national and international network. Its research programme focuses on the relation between cultural and linguistic diversity, as these influence and respond to variation in the size and structure of human populations. Methodological and theoretical advances in evolutionary biology are adapted and applied to a wide range of case studies in cultural history. The Centre is also funded to undertake a major outreach programme to convey the importance of this work to academic and non-academic audiences.

 

Aims and Objectives

 

The AHRC CECD is a Phase Two AHRC Research Centre (2006-2010), focusing on accelerating the development of the new discipline: Cultural Evolutionary Studies. This is currently emerging in the interstices of several existing fields, including archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, human genetics and mathematical modelling.

 

To achieve this we are:

 

• Setting up collaborative research networks with other groups and individuals currently working in relative isolation from one another to produce a critical mass of workers and projects in this field.

• Working with these networks to carry out a series of research projects on key issues for the understanding of cultural evolution.

• Training a new generation of researchers, not just within a single institution but through the holding of open international summer schools and exchange visits.

• Developing and disseminating new theoretical ideas and methodological tools.

• Fostering the building of publicly available databases of the kind that are now mandatory in evolutionary biology.

• Setting up administrative structures that support the maintenance of long-term links between researchers and institutions.

• Making the wider academic and non-academic community aware of the new discipline and its significance through an outreach programme.

 

For further details of the Centre’s activities, please refer to the website: http://www.cecd.ucl.ac.uk/

The Post

 

PROJECT TITLE: The Evolutionary Anatomy of Speech

 

BRIEF OUTLINE: The successful applicant will work in collaboration with osteologists and speech engineers, and will have specific responsibility for estimating parameters for the vocal tracts of extinct hominins (to constrain software models of articulatory capacity and articulatory output). The successful applicant will also participate fully in the scientific meetings of the larger HANDTOMOUTH consortium. This Post-Doctoral Fellowship offers the opportunity to work in an exciting interdisciplinary environment, on issues that are fundamental for understanding human evolution and human uniqueness.

 

PROJECT DETAIL:

Objectives

• To define hard tissue markers for laryngeal position in humans and great apes
• To define hard tissue markers for pharyngeal length and width
• To define hard tissue markers for oral cavity length
• To apply these markers to predict vocal tract dimensions in fossil hominins
• To calculate nasal cavity and sinus volumes in fossil hominins

 

Description of work

Laryngeal position will be predicted using the biometric measures of cranio-mandibular geometry used by Boë et al. (2002) to predict laryngeal position in the La Chapelle-aux-Saints and La Ferrassie Neanderthals. These measurements are based on those produced by Honda & Tiede (1998). A series of other hard tissue measurements will be tested to define those most likely to predict other aspects of vocal tract morphology. MRIs of fossil hominin nasal cavities will be used to determine nasal and sinus volumes. The methods used are based on those of Rae & Koppe (2000).The hominins will include, a male (Amud 1) & female (Gibraltor 1) Neanderthal, Homo erectus (KNM ER 3733), Homo heidlebergensis (Kabwe 1), Homo habilis (OH 24) & a Paranthropus (OH 5) and Austrolopithecus (Sts 5). Species averages will be used for any missing measurements.

 

Application of results by other collaborators

 

The predicted vocal tract dimensions will act as the input data for a separate work package led by Dr Anna Barney (University of Southampton), which will build on the models of Neanderthal vocal tract shape and vowel space defined in this study. The vocal tract shape functions will be used as input to an existing vocal tract acoustic modelling programme (VOAC), to explore the range of sounds which might be achievable by a Neanderthal. The output from this modelling work will then be assessed to determine the possible vocal range of a series of fossil hominins.

 

Dissemination of results

The outcomes of this work will be disseminated by attendance at an appropriate international conference and by the preparation of journal articles for peer refereed journals.

 

References:

Boe, L.J., Heim, J.L., Honda, K. and Maeda, S. (2002): The potential Neanderthal vowel space was as large as that of modern humans. Journal of Phonetics 30: 465-484

Honda, K. & Tiede, M. K. (1998) An MRI study on the relationship between oral cavity shape and larynx position. In Proceedings of the 5th international conference on spoken language processing, Vol. 2 ,pp. 437–440.

Rae, T. & Koppe, T. (2000) Isometric scaling of maxillary sinus volume in hominoids. Journal of Human Evolution 38: 411-423.

Job Description

 

Job title:                     European Commission-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship in:

The Evolutionary Anatomy of Speech

 

Duration:                    Two Years

 

Department:              Institute of Archaeology

 

Grade:                        Grade 7 (from £25,633 to £31,525 plus £2,472 London Allowance, according to previous experience).

 

Responsible to:        Dr James Steele

 

Main Purpose:

 

The postholder will be required to carry out research in the areas of the evolutionary anatomy of speech, and of comparative primate vocal tract physiology (as part of a research team).

 

 

Main Activities & Responsibilities:

 

• Record and analyse data on correlations between hard tissue dimensions and landmarks and the soft tissue structure of the vocal tract in a range of living primates, to enable prediction of vocal tract morphology in extinct hominins
• Liaise with speech engineers to refine the application of these results to a software acoustical model of vocal tract output
• Prepare papers for journals/presentations either in-house or at national/international conferences or seminars to disseminate research findings.
• Read academic papers, journals and textbooks and attend conferences to keep abreast of developments.
• Co-ordinate and liaise with other members of the research group over work progress.

 

The postholder will actively follow UCL policies including Equal Opportunities and Race Equality policies.

The postholder will maintain an awareness and observation of Fire and Health & Safety Regulations.

This job description reflects the present requirements of the post. As duties and responsibilities change and develop the job description will be reviewed and be subject to amendment in consultation with the postholder.

Person Specification

(E: Essential, D: Desirable)

 

Applicants should demonstrate evidence of the following:

 

Knowledge

 

·         A PhD in any relevant area (e.g. in speech physiology, comparative skeletal anatomy, or osteology) (E)

·         Familiarity with current debates on language evolution and on the evolution of the human vocal tract (D)

 

Skills and abilities

 

·         Experience of osteometric analysis (D)

·         Experience of anatomical dissection and/or radiographic analysis (D)

·         Experience of presenting research at conferences, and of writing up research for publication (D)

 

Personal Qualities

 

·         Good communication skills (E)

·         Commitment to high quality research, including excellent attention to detail (E)

·         Strong organisational skills and personal initiative (E)

·         Ability to work within a small team and to integrate activities within the framework of a larger project (E)

·         Commitment to UCL’s policy of equal opportunity and the ability to work harmoniously with colleagues and students of all cultures and backgrounds (E)

Salary

 

This appointment is available from 1^st March 2007 and is at Research Fellow level. The salary will be on the UCL salary scale, Grade 7 (from £25,633 to £31,525 plus £2,472 London Allowance, according to previous experience).

 

 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/salary_scales/final_grades.php

 

Applications

 

Please submit an application form (downloadable from http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/docs/download_forms/job_app.doc) together with a CV including your academic and employment history, and any additional relevant skills.  Please outline in your covering letter your reasons for applying and why you think you are a strong candidate for the post.

 

Please include the names and contact details (including email and fax) of at least two referees.  Please indicate whether we can contact your referees without further permission from you.

 

Applications should be sent (by post or email) to arrive by the specified closing date to:

 

The HANDTOMOUTH Project Manager

c/o Manu Davies, Administrator,

AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity,

Institute of Archaeology,

University College London,

31-34 Gordon Square,

London WC1H 0PY

 

Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 4607

Fax: +44 (0)20 7383 2572

Email: manu.davies@ucl.ac.uk

 

Short-listed candidates will be invited to attend a formal interview soon after the closing date for receipt of applications.

 

Informal enquiries may be addressed to Dr James Steele on +44 (0)20 7679 4773 or by email to j.steele@ucl.ac.uk

 

 

CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: 9^th February 2007

 

Interview Date:  Interviews will be held in the second or third week of February 2007.

 

Proposed Start Date: 1^st March 2007, or as soon as possible thereafter.