Senior Research Associate – Computational Linguist

About the role

We are seeking a highly motivated Senior Research Associate in Computational Linguistics to join Dr Isobelle Clarke’s team at Lancaster University. The postdoctoral position is part of the UKRI Future Leader’s Fellowship project “A Multi‑Dimensional Understanding of the Digital Far Right”.

Key responsibilities

• Systematically identify linguistic features and behavioural patterns of far‑right groups across digital platforms.
• Develop and validate innovative methodologies for analysing high‑risk content.
• Provide training on the developed tools and methods to law‑enforcement partners.
• Collaborate with interdisciplinary researchers, contribute to publications and conference presentations.
• Maintain and expand web‑scraping pipelines to collect relevant data.

Required profile

• PhD (or submitted with viva scheduled) in Computational Linguistics, NLP or a closely related discipline.
• Strong background in data science and natural language processing.
• Experience in web‑scraping and handling large, sparse datasets.
• Interest in the study of extremist online discourse.
• Excellent communication, teamwork and problem‑solving skills.

Required skills

• Natural language processing
• Web scraping
• Machine learning
• Automatic feature recognition
• Multivariate statistical techniques
• Sparse data analysis and zero‑inflation methods

What we offer

• Fixed‑term contract for 48 months (1.0 FTE) with a competitive salary (£39,906‑£46,049 per annum).
• Location on the Bailrigg campus in Lancaster, offering a vibrant research community.
• Access to state‑of‑the‑art computing facilities and interdisciplinary collaboration.
• Support for professional development and conference participation.