Job Purpose

To contribute to research entitled "Do oral contraceptives alter women's mate preferences?", a five-year project that is funded by the European Research Council. The project investigates the effects of hormone levels, including the exogenous hormones in oral contraceptives, on aspects of women's face, voice and body perception, such as attractiveness judgements and emotion processing. This postdoctoral position requires a review of current literature in relevant fields, development of stimuli and experimental procedures, contributing to the design and programming of the behavioural experiments and questionnaires, recruiting and running the participants, assisting in analysing the results, and participating in the writing up of the results.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

1. To review the current literature on hormone-mediated behaviour and perception and to summarise this in a written report early in the project.

2. To generate a range of candidate stimulus sets that can be parametrically manipulated in the context of face, voice and body perception.

3. To plan and conduct pilot experiments on the candidate stimulus sets, in order to determine an optimal set of tasks for the remaining experimental programme.

4. To work with the PIs to develop the experimental protocol to be used in the final experimental programme.

5. To recruit all participants, and to run the agreed behavioural studies, dealing with all aspects of testing the participants and storing data.

6. To perform statistical analyses of the data and to produce reports describing these results.

7. To establish an expert reputation and track record in the field/discipline

8. To take a lead role in writing up papers and identify high impact national and international journals for publication.

9. Identify future sources of funding and develop grant applications with the PIs.

10. To write up research papers and present research findings at high level national and international meetings.

Standard Terms & Conditions

Salary will be on the University's Research and Teaching Grade, level 7, £31,948 - £35,938 per annum.

New entrants to the University will be required to serve a probationary period of 6 months.

The successful applicant will be eligible to join the Universities' Superannuation Scheme. Further information regarding the scheme is available from the Superannuation Officer, who is also prepared to advise on questions relating to the transfer of Superannuation benefits.

All research and related activities, including grants, donations, clinical trials, contract research, consultancy and commercialisation are required to be managed through the University's relevant processes (e.g. contractual and financial), in accordance with the University Court's policies.

Vacancy Ref: 001824, closing date 29 May 2012