KU Leuven and the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) are accepting applications for the full-time FED-tWIN position, “POP Heritage – Popular Heritage Lost & Found. A new approach to the online exploration and curation of the Belgian mass market heritage (20^th-21^st Century).” 50% of this full-time position entails a tenure track position at the KU Leuven Arts Faculty in Cultural Studies with a focus on digital cultural heritage, data analysis, and data visualization in the field of Belgian popular literature. The other 50% position is offered by the KBR. The successful candidate will work half-time at KU Leuven (as a tenure track ZAP) and half-time at the KBR (as a contractual SW2 Workleader). The evaluation and selection of the candidate will be carried out by a committee of representatives from both institutions.

This project will be developed within the framework of the FED-tWIN – Program of sustainable research cooperation between the federal scientific institutes (FSI) and the universities. The supervisors of the project are Sophie Vandepontseele, Director of Contemporary Collections at the KBR, and Prof. Fred Truyen, Professor at the Arts Faculty (Research Unit: Literary Studies, Research Group: Literary Theory and Cultural Studies) and Program Director of the POC Digital Humanities.

The job entails both research and education duties. Candidates need to be well-versed in digitization techniques and methods, data structures, and visualization techniques applied to the Humanities. The researcher preferably has 6-8 years of experience as a postdoc or as an employee at an archival institution after having obtained their PhD.

Please see the full job vacancy text for more details about the position, desired competencies and qualities, and the application procedure.

Applications are accepted up to and including Thursday 24 February 2022. The appointment is expected to start on the first of October 2022.

On 6 and 7 May 2021, the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) – together with several institutions including KU Leuven – will hold an international webinar on Old Books and New Technologies: Medieval Books and the Digital Humanities in the Low Countries. It will bring together researchers from libraries, archives, and museums, and university faculties with an interest in how the medieval book is contextualized by new technologies, with particular emphasis placed on the intersection of the medieval book and Digital Humanities. The languages of the conference will be English, Dutch, and French. For more information, keep reading!

This event is free and will include many interest talks (including two keynotes) from researchers across Belgium and the Netherlands, including from the Faculty of Arts and KU Leuven Libraries.

From the event website: “Over the course of the Middle Ages, what was called the Low Countries developed an original written culture. It is known to us through sources in Latin, in Middle Dutch and in Old and Middle French. At first centred in the Benedictine and Cistercian abbeys of Egmond and Friesland in the North or the Dunes, Ghent and the closely connected chain of Lobbes – Gembloux – Liège in the South, it increasingly became a town phenomenon following the development of the largest and most dense urban conglomeration in the European Middle Ages both with large towns like Ghent, Bruges, Tournai, Liège, Brussels, Antwerp, Leuven, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Utrecht and a series of smaller cities scattered over the area, all with their convents, and, consequently, books.

In the 15^th century, the production of luxury manuscripts for the Burgundian court and its environment flourished in Bruges, Ghent, Oudenaarde, Brussels and Tournai, which gave rise to the development of an important pictorial culture. At the same time, the presence of towns, cathedrals and chapters all over the area gave rise to the rise of the famous French-Flemish school of polyphony, the works of which often have come down to us in beautifully executed manuscripts.

The urban character of the region in the later Middle Ages was essential in the development and expansion of such phenomena as the Devotio moderna or early Humanism. When the latter was essential in the spread of Latin schools and the amount of 15^th-century editions of classical Latin authors in the IJssel region, the first found its expression in a proper network of convents and libraries, which is highlighted by the ‘Red Cloister Register’, the famous collective catalogue compiled in the early sixteenth century.

All this produced an important heritage of medieval books, manuscripts and incunabula as well as the sources for their history up to the eighteenth century (old library inventories, pre-modern bio-bibliographical sources, accounts of literary journeys, etc.).”

You can view the program here and you can register for the event here.