One postdoc position and three PhD positions are available on the KU Leuven ERC Starting Grant project “Making Migrant Voices Heard Through Literature: How Collaboration is Changing the Cultural Field” (COLLAB, 2023-2028). Positions start on 1 September 2023. The application deadline is 15 April 2023. 

Overview of the vacancies:
1) Postdoctoral Researcher in the Fields of Social Sciences and Literary Studies (36 months) with experience in field research, especially with migrant populations and civil society actors, and ability to work in interdisciplinary settings. More information here.

2) PhD Researcher in the Fields of Social Sciences and Literary Studies with a background in Comparative Literature, Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, European Studies, Social Sciences or a related area and a strong interest in the analysis of literary texts in their social and cultural setting, especially in migration contexts. More information here.

3) PhD Researcher in Comparative Literature with strong multilingual skills to work on the analysis of collaborative texts that emerge from encounters with migrants, with a particular focus on the implications of transcultural mediation in the genres of the anthology and the short story collection. More information here.

4) PhD Researcher in the Fields of Literary Studies and Business Economics with an interest in digital humanities and the institutional aspects of literary production to study the impact of crowdfunding on the publishing industry, especially in today’s context of migration. More information here.

Within the context of the ID-N project NIKAW (Networks of Ideas and Knowledge in the Ancient World), funded by the Special Research Fund (BOF) of KU Leuven, applications are invited for a PhD position on the subject of social network analysis for the transmission of ideas in the ancient world. The NIKAW project aims to exploit textual information from the ancient world to reconstruct the transmission of knowledge across multilingual, geographically and chronologically extended communities.

The PhD candidate will focus on the study of the relations emerging from the mentions of names in Greek and Latin texts. Part of the tasks will be carried out in collaboration with another PhD student and one Postdoc. Using a large set of automatically retrieved passages, gathered by the other PhD scholar, the candidate will reconstruct and exploit the network of intellectual relations over a large span of time. A particular test-case on the first stages of the advent of Christianity is foreseen. Research will be carried out along two tracks:

• Firstly, the candidate will develop a graph database model to properly represent the mentions of people in ancient texts. To this end, the candidate will work closely with the PhD scholar working on the extraction and disambiguation of names in ancient texts.
• Secondly, the candidate will use the graph database to reconstruct and analyze the network of mentions in ancient texts, applying tools of Social Network Analysis. In collaboration with the Postdoctoral scholar, the candidate will also investigate the application of more advanced techniques such as learning relevant structural features with the use of network embeddings. In particular, the PhD student will analyze the changes in the network in the first four centuries of the Common Era, observing how the integration of Christian authors impacts relevant network features.

The deadline to submit an application for this PhD position is 8 September 2022. The candidate is expected to start in November 2022 or as soon as possible thereafter. The position is a full-time position for one year and can be extended to four years pending initial positive evaluation.

For more information on the desired profile and how to apply, see the full job listing on the KU Leuven job portal.

Within the context of the ID-N project NIKAW (Networks of Ideas and Knowledge in the Ancient World), funded by the Special Research Fund (BOF) of KU Leuven, applications are invited for a PhD position on the subject of machine learning for information extraction from ancient texts. The NIKAW project aims to exploit textual information from the ancient world to reconstruct the transmission of knowledge across multilingual, geographically and chronologically extended communities. 

The PhD candidate will focus on the extraction of relevant information from Ancient Greek and Latin texts, which will subsequently be used for further analyses within the project. Part of the tasks will be carried out in collaboration with another PhD student and one Postdoc. Research will be carried out along three tracks:

• Firstly, the candidate will develop a state of the art natural language processing pipeline for named entity extraction and named entity linking, specifically tailored towards classical texts. 
• Secondly, the candidate will develop a bilingual language model (Ancient Greek-Latin), based on neural NLP methods, that will facilitate named entity extraction and linking, and the representation of the context of the mentions in the corpus used.
• Thirdly, the candidate will improve the natural language processing pipeline by making use of additional information developed by other project members. This includes knowledge on potential linguistic and personal relations gained from social network analysis and learned network embeddings.

The deadline to submit an application for this PhD position is 8 September 2022. The candidate is expected to start in November 2022 or as soon as possible thereafter. The position is a full-time position for one year and can be extended to four years pending initial positive evaluation. 

For more information on the desired profile and how to apply, see the full job listing on the KU Leuven job portal. 

The Computational Literary Studies Infrastructure (CLS Infra) has opened the second call for applications for the TNA Fellowships. The CLS Infra Fellowship Program provides access to a wide range of data, tools, and knowledge. Scholars from literary studies with an interest in computational literary studies methods are invited to apply for a fellowship grant.

Selected fellows will obtain free-of-charge physical access to the infrastructure and will become part of the larger CLS community. Fellows will have the opportunity to interact with experts, receive advice on ongoing projects, learn how to use the ecosystem of data, tools, and standards, assemble new literary corpora, and profit from hands-on training and support.

Typically, fellowship grants cover housing and subsistence costs as well as travel to and from the host institution. Successful applicants are expected to join the chosen infrastructure for a period of 4 to 12 weeks. Shorter residencies will be also taken into consideration.

The second call for applications is open from Monday 18 April 2022 until Monday 23 May 2022. Find more information about the fellowship program, including the participating host institutions and the application procedure here.

Computational Literary Studies Infrastructure (CLS INFRA) has opened the call for applications for their Transnational Access Fellowships (TNA).  

CLS INFRA is a European Commission-funded project which aims to create unified and easy access to a wide range of European and national infrastructures for the Computational Literary Studies community. The overall aim of the project is to create unified and easy access to a wide range of European and national infrastructures for the Computational Literary Studies community. This includes: connecting the building of resources and infrastructure, providing training environments and networks, and promoting the theoretical considerations of these resources and infrastructures. A key part of this aim is the provision of Transnational Access Fellowships (TNA), which aims to provides access to a wide range of data, tools, and knowledge. 

Scholars from literary studies or with an interest in Computational Literary Studies methods are invited to apply for a fellowship grant under one of the infrastructure providers. Successful applicants will not only obtain free-of-charge physical access to the infrastructure, but in the context of the overall project they will become part of the larger CLS community. By responding to one of the calls, applicants may have the opportunity to: 

• Interact with experts; 
• Receive advice on ongoing projects; 
• Learn how to use the ecosystem of data, tools, and standards; 
• Assemble new literary corpora; 
• Profit from hands-on training and support. 

Fellowships grants will cover housing and subsistence costs as well as travel to and from the host institution. The CLS INFRA Fellowships are funded by the European Union under the rules of transnational access. 

Calls for fellowship grants will be launched twice a year for a total of six calls. Scholars from the European Union and beyond are eligible to apply. Successful applicants are expected to join the chosen infrastructure for a period of 8 to 12 weeks. However, shorter residencies will be also taken into consideration. 

The first call will be open from Monday 1 November 2021 to Monday 6 December 2021. 

To apply for a TNA fellowship or for more information regarding the host institutions, eligibility requirements, and the terms and conditions you can visit the CLS INFRA site.  

DARIAH-EU is launching an annual Open Access Monograph* Bursary for the publication of a first monograph in the field of Digital Humanities. This bursary reflects DARIAH’s commitment to the growing open research culture for Arts and Humanities scholars. Through this funding, the organization hopes to make Open Access publishing a more viable option for early career researchers, who often encounter financial or professional hurdles when considering this publishing route. For more information from DARIAH-EU on the context of Open Access publishing and the specific considerations that went into the creation of this annual bursary, read here.  

Key details of the bursary: 

• Publication costs will be covered up to the maximum of 7,000 EUR. 
• The funding approval is valid for a period of 12 months after the grant agreement is signed.  

Key eligibility criteria and application requirements: 

• Applications are open to early career researchers who received (or will receive) their PhDs in DARIAH member countries or who have a professional affiliation (including both academic and alt-academic) in a DARIAH member country.  
• The proposed monograph must be in the field of Digital Humanities, which can be interpreted in the broad sense of the theory and practice of developing, applying, and reflecting upon digital tools, methods, and assets in humanities research. 
• Proposed monographs must not have been previously published. PhD dissertations which have been deposited in institutional repositories and/or published on microfilm are also eligible.
• An enclosed letter asserting expression of interest from the publisher is mandatory. 
• The publisher should be listed as an open-access publisher, for example, in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). 

Key dates:  

• Application deadline: 6 December 2021 
• Announcement of winner: January 2022 

The above list of requirements is not exhaustive. For more details on the requirements, expectations, and timeline regarding the submission process and project, see the DARIAH-EU page.  

*DARIAH-EU specifies that the terms “book” and “monograph” are used in a sense that includes all long forms of scholarship.