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PhD Opportunity: Cross-Lingual Factual Transfer in NLP at the University of Helsinki

PhD position

9/26/2026

Curious whether facts learned in one language can travel to another inside a multilingual LLM — and what happens when they don't? Helsinki-NLP is recruiting a fully-funded PhD student to find out.

If you're finishing a Master's in NLP, computational linguistics, or machine learning and want to dig into how multilingual models actually handle (or mishandle) facts across languages, this position was built for you.

About the Position

  • Role: Fully-funded PhD student in NLP

  • Host: Language Technology research unit, University of Helsinki (Helsinki-NLP)

  • Duration: 3 years, with a possible 1-year extension

  • Project: FLaM, within the Helsinki-NLP team

  • Supervisors: Jörg Tiedemann and Timothee Mickus

  • Expected start: January 1st (some flexibility possible)


What You'll Be Working On

The core question: can pretraining data available in one language help a multilingual LLM produce factually correct text in a different language — and, just as importantly, can we use the failures of this transfer to map out where a model's pretraining data actually falls short? You'll be probing the mechanics of cross-lingual factual knowledge inside LLMs, with an eye toward both understanding the phenomenon and using it as a diagnostic tool for pretraining data gaps.

What They're Looking For

  • A Master's degree in computational linguistics, NLP, machine learning, or an adjacent field

  • No prior enrollment in another PhD programme

  • Genuine alignment between your research interests and the topic above — this matters more to the selection process than your publication record

In line with DORA practices, quantitative indicators (publication counts, etc.) will not factor into the assessment. Fit with the research topic is what counts.

How to Apply

This one's a direct email application, not a portal. Send your materials to timothee.mickus@helsinki.fi and jorg.tiedemann@helsinki.fi with the subject line:

[crosslingual fact transfer, PhD application]

Include:

  • A CV detailing your education (max 1 page)

  • The name and email of one reference (ideally a former supervisor, e.g. for your Master's thesis)

  • A research statement (max 500 words) on how your interests align with the topic and what you hope to get out of the PhD

  • Your transcript of grades

Deadline: Full consideration for applications received before September 30th — the position stays open until filled after that, so earlier is better. Shortlisted applicants will be contacted directly for an interview.

Meet the Team

Timothee Mickus
Research Fellow, University of Helsinki

Jörg Tiedemann
Helsinki-NLP, Language Technology research unit

🔗 Helsinki-NLP team blog
🔗 FLaM project

For more personalized tips or templates contact our team.

www.applywithmentors.com