Are you interested in studying or working at LEVYNA? We are an interdisciplinary team that is always eager to explore new venues. Our team’s expertise and facilities are an excellent opportunity for anyone looking for creative ways to investigate human behavior on various levels of scientific inquiry. We offer opportunities at several career advancement levels, from student exchange to post-doctoral positions.
Positions in the CREDO project!
We are seeking two post-doctoral researchers to work full time on the project "Computing Religious Devotion: How Reinforcing Supernatural Beliefs Affects Normative Models in the Mind". The CREDO project aims to devise and test a computational model explaining whether and how religious devotion affects decision-making in moral dilemmas. We will simulate and test sub-processes of the human cognitive system in isolation but, crucially, simulate and test their interactions in complex causal chains using computational modelling to facilitate understanding the mechanics of religious devotion. The proposed computational model will incorporate the formative role of cultural settings on human cognition and propose different parameters to account for the cross-cultural variance in religiosity. Parameters for the model will be recovered from a variety of laboratory and field studies and tested in a large-scale study across religious traditions, investigating how socio-ecological factors shape religious devotion and associated computations during moral dilemmas.
We are looking for candidates with various skills and interests in human social cognition and decision-making: from experimental skills to skills in formal modeling and/or artificial neural networks. If you are interested, please visit the web of the official call:
https://www.phil.muni.cz/en/careers/available-positions/76900
We will also be looking for Ph.D. students during 2024, please get in touch if you are interested!
Research stays and internships
We offer short-term research stays for doctoral students and early career researchers as well as internships for bachelor/master students. The former stays usually take the form of joint research projects with a LEVYNA member (e.g., 2-3 months), and visiting scholars can also take part in other LEVYNA activities (e.g., Bayesian club, Reading club).
Internships can take the form of helping LEVYNA members with a specific research project (e.g., as a research assistant in data collection), working and testing a specific research device (e.g., eye-tracking), or analyzing existing data sets at LEVYNA. Internships can be coordinated with HUME Lab, an infrastructure that provides research support, lab space, and research equipment.
The stays and internships can be funded through programs such as Erasmus+, CEEPUS, or similar exchange programs. You can also check with the International Office at your university or with the office at the Faculty of Arts for more possibilities.
Ph.D. positions
LEVYNA offers full Ph.D. positions through the Department for the Study of Religion at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University. This is a four-year program focused on a specific research project (see current LEVYNA Ph.D. students for inspiration) mentored by a senior LEVYNA member. The position guarantees a basic income in the form of a stipend and, if available, opportunities to work on grant projects investigated by LEVYNA members. We also work with other laboratories based in Europe and the USA, where students can hone their skills under the supervision of experts in various fields. More details about the Ph.D. program can be found on the website of the Department for the Study of Religion. We welcome applicants curious about human behavior and its evolutionary underpinnings, with a specific interest in religious cognition and ritual behavior.
Other post-doctoral applications
We would be happy to support an application for post-doctoral positions through various funding schemes such as the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action, The Czech Science Foundation, or internal Masaryk University grants for excellent researchers.
If you would like to inquire about any of these offers in more detail or submit an application for some of these positions, please contact the LEVYNA director Martin Lang (martinlang@mail.muni.cz).