Call for Expression of Interest Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA-PF)

Call for Expressions of Interest

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships

The Linguistics Section of the Department of Humanities at the University of Pavia (Italy) (https://studiumanistici.dip.unipv.it/it/ricerca/le-sezioni/linguistica-teorica-e-applicata) encourages expressions of interest for applications alongside a local research supervisor to the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme (MSCA PF) financed by the European Commission from excellent postdoctoral researchers in the fields of:

●      Historical linguistics

●      Indo-European studies

●      Language typology

The staff of the section working in these areas are: Silvia Luraghi, Simone Mattiola, Elisa Roma, Chiara Zanchi (tenured staff), Matteo Tarsi (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow), and Lucrezia Carnesale and Martina Giuliani (postdocs). In addition to permanent staff and postdoctoral researchers, there are also PhD students working in these areas: Elia Calligari, Cecilia Mignanti, Nadia Scanavino, Michele Tron, Silvia Zampetta and Giulia Zhang (https://studiumanistici.dip.unipv.it/it/didattica/dottorati/dottorato-linguistica/dottorandi).

For an overview of all the research lines carried out by the members of the Linguistics Section, please consult the following website: https://studiumanistici.dip.unipv.it/it/ricerca/le-sezioni/linguistica-teorica-e-applicata.

Selected candidates will be offered both academic and administrative support from faculty, including one current Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (Matteo Tarsi), and the University Research Support Office with regard to proposal development.

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action is a funding scheme that supports researcher mobility: European Postdoctoral Fellowships may last 12-24 months to pursue a research project, advanced training and knowledge exchange at the host institution. It offers a competitive salary, mobility and family allowances, plus a research budget.

NB: In view of the current rules on post-doctoral contracts in Italian universities, we can only consider applications that are for 24-month projects.

Please note that, in order to apply for a MSCA PF you need to fulfill all eligibility criteria. Please check them carefully already when applying to this call for intererst. You can refer to the 2025 call for refence (HERE).

Applicants are expected to have an excellent CV and a strong publication record. They must hold a PhD at the Horizon Europe MSCA PF Call deadline, usually in the first week of September each year, have a maximum of 8 years full-time equivalent experience in research after their PhD and must not have spent (or carried out their main activities for) more than 12 months in Italy in the 36 months prior to the call deadline. No nationality requirements apply. For the final eligibility criteria please refer to the official call documents.

Full details on the funding scheme and the application process will be available starting from the launch of the call for proposals, whose indicative date is April 9, 2026. The deadline for the MSCA PF 2025 call is September 9, 2026 (https://rea.ec.europa.eu/funding-and-grants/horizon-europe-marie-sklodowska-curie-actions/msca-postdoctoral-fellowships_en). Please note that resubmission restrictions will apply for applications that scored below 70% in the previous year.

The University and the Department of Humanities

The University of Pavia is one of the most ancient universities in Europe and relies on a solid tradition of research in all scientific fields. In the field of Humanities, it has been the host of numerous renowned scholars in the course of the last two centuries. Presently, the Dept. of Humanities offers three BA and nine MA courses and participates in four PhD programs. The Linguistic Section of the Dept. of Humanities offers a MA program in General and Applied Linguistics, focusing - among other topics - on historical and Indo-European linguistics, language typology and corpus linguistics. The Section also hosts a PhD program in Linguistics, which features a curriculum in general, historical, and typological linguistics (https://studiumanistici.dip.unipv.it/it/didattica/dottorati/dottorato-linguistica).

Several members of the Section are committed to the creation of electronic resources (annotated corpora and databases) for the study of ancient and modern languages (https://studiumanistici.dip.unipv.it/it/ricerca/servizi-e-innovazione/laboratori-e-strumentazione/laboratorio-di-analisi-e-risorse).

In particular, over the past two years the Section has hosted two projects funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research focusing precisely on the creation of language resources for historical linguistics and language typology: the project “Verbs’ Constructional Patterns across Languages: a Multi-Dimensional Investigation”, within which PaVeDa – the Pavia Verbs Database – was created, and the project “Linked WordNets for Ancient Indo-European Languages”, aimed at the creation of lexical databases for Ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.

In addition, in the recent past and in the near future, several events related to these research themes have been and will be organized: the Pavia International Summer School for Indo-European Linguistics (a biennial event, which will reach its seventh edition in September 2026), the Global WordNet Conference (January 2025), the Transalpine Typology Meeting (July 2025), the Nowele Biennial Conference (April 2026, “Perspectives on Germanic Syntax”), a workshop dedicated to Constructions (April 2026) and the next International Colloquium of Ancient Greek Linguistics (planned for June 2028).

The Linguistics Section at the Department of Humanities

The Linguistics Section is a large structure with several rooms, which presently accommodate eleven tenured members and one non-tenured member, three post-doc researchers (plus one upcoming opening) and several PhD students. It also has a meeting room and three Labs: LARL - Laboratorio di Analisi e Risorse Linguistiche, especially devoted to the creation and management of linguistic resources, a laboratory for psycholinguistics and one for experimental phonetics. It joins the Department library, a large on-site facility with spacious reading rooms that is open daily.

The initiatives organized by members of the Linguistics Section are numerous and are advertised both through the University’s institutional communication channels and through the social media profiles and pages Linguistics in Pavia (we are active on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and Telegram). Both at the Department and Section levels, particular importance is given to initiatives that facilitate collaborative and informal interaction between students and researchers at different stages of seniority. In this context, we mention Cantieri d’Autunno, annual departmental conferences devoted to the ancient world, and Discorsi sul metodo, a series of seminars on linguistic research methodology curated by PhD students and addressed in particular to peers and MA students.

Steps to follow and Important dates

Selection of prospective applicants will follow a two-step process:

Please express your interest by March 1, 2026 sending the following documents to chiara.zanchi@unipv.it and matteo.tarsi@unipv.it, specifying ‘MSCA @ LinguisticsUNIPV’ in the subject of your e-mail (Please include all contact details in the body of the mail):

1)  a two-page summary of your research proposal;

2)  a CV (maximum 2 pages long) and full publication list;

3)  a cover letter.

Short-listed applicants will be notified by 1 April 2026 and invited to an on-line interview to be held on April 7, 2026.

After the interviews, all applicants will be notified of the results. Selected applicants will be invited to an online meeting on April 13, 2026, where they will receive further information on grant writing and deadlines. An on-campus visit is planned for June 2026 for them to get a sense of the work environment and meet the prospective supervisor in person, with whom they will already have started to work on their full proposal.

Please note that a complete draft of the application must be ready by June 30, 2026. Follow-up on the first draft is planned to unfold during the summer. The complete application must be ready by September 1, 2026 to allow for submission some time ahead of the deadline.