Postdoctoral Researcher: LLMs for Philosophical Inquiry

University of Reading; Reading; On-site; GBP 37,000 - 41,000; Full time

Job summary

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Reading invites applications for a Post-Doctoral Research Associate to join the AHRC Catalyst project Large Language Models as Philosophical Inquiry. The successful candidate will design and carry out model‑analysis studies, collaborating with the Principal Investigator and publishing findings.

This interdisciplinary role blends computational linguistics and philosophy, offering experience with interpretability methods, study design, and

Qualifications

• A doctoral degree in NLP, computational linguistics, ML or a cognate discipline.
• Experience analyzing the internal representations or computational behavior of large language models using probing or interpretability techniques.
• Experience designing empirical studies and applying statistics to analysis.
• Strong Python programming skills and experience with standard ML/NLP libraries.
• A record of peer‑reviewed publications in reputable journals or well‑respected conference proceedings.

Responsibilities

• Design and carry out the model-analysis studies for the AHRC Catalyst project, collaborating closely with the Principal Investigator.
• Publish and present findings; assist in organizing the project conference and a special issue of the Ratio journal.
• Develop interdisciplinary expertise at the intersection of linguistics, philosophy and computational linguistics.

Skills

Doctoral degree in NLP/ComputationalL|

Education

PhD in NLP/Computational Linguistics/ML

Job description

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Reading invites applications for a Post-Doctoral Research Associate to join the AHRC Catalyst project Large Language Models as Philosophical Inquiry. The successful candidate will design and carry out model‑analysis studies, collaborating with the Principal Investigator and publishing findings.

This interdisciplinary role blends computational linguistics and philosophy, offering experience with interpretability methods, study design, and