Jessica writes:
Within the United States, the racialization and criminalization of Black and Brown bodies have been and continue to be a violent process. One shape and form of this violence is police violence, more specifically, police shootings. Different articles, books, scholars, and organizational databases have gone about examining and tracking police killings, including but not limited to: Washington Post’s Fatal Force Database and Mapping Police Violence.
This year-long fellowship and project is a data visualization project using data from the Washington Post’s database, with a focus on the Latiné people killed in police shootings.
The current idea: there will be a cutout of the United States, and using a pin model, four years of Latiné deaths across the states will be physically represented. Breaking the data into grouped years, the model will drop each year’s number of victims, year by year, with different points of information represented by the pins’ form, color, height, and grouped quantity by diameter.
The pins will drop by year and hang suspended. Imagine a map base with pins standing on top, but the base will be embedded with gaps/holes that the pins will fall through when released and stay suspended, so they don’t fall completely to the ground but hang on the mirrored side of where they once lived.
Take, for example, the year 2015, which has 176 recorded victims of police killings; the distribution of the 176 persons will simultaneously fall while the victims of the remaining three years remain standing until the year has passed. The pins dropping down at different intervals represent the ways Latiné death is anticipated and almost inevitable. Latiné bodies within the United States anticipate the potentiality of violence, the knowledge that racialized bodies are not and have not been safe within the nation-state.
Along with this lived sense of precarity and anticipation, the hope is that the viewer who sees this visualization and its process will notice and feel the growing sense of anticipation, though it will differ from the embodied one the community itself feels.
A question here: why not just let the pins drop, and why keep them suspended? Beyond the practicality and efficiency of restarting the board to all four years standing, I am working and inspired by Latiné writing and artistic production of death. It may sound odd, but the idea of the suspension comes from a mixture of Mexican and Chicanx celebration of the Day of the Dead and a poem by Jose Olivarez.
The idea is that underneath the main structure and base of this nation, the lives of the dead remain. The nation-state stands on top of these deaths and is built on this history.
What have we tested and thought through so far? With any prototype, the minute you think you narrow down one detail, a thousand more questions arise. Theoretically, to aid in the visualization of different data elements we have discussed what about the pins can be transformed to make different points.
For example, the height of the pin will represent the different age groups largely affected by police killings; the diameter, the quantity. Where one year has 176 victims, imagining filling even one map with 176 pins felt nearly impossible, not even to consider a four-year range. To consider that the diameter of the pin will represent quantity groups.
1 victim – pin of 4 diameters 5 victims – pin of 7 diameters 15 victims – pin of 10 diameters
Along with height and diameter, the pins will have two different color groups for sex: male and female.
As we began designing and isolating the data, each detail of the prototype raised new questions. With any data visualization projects there are certain audience takeaways you try to achieve. With maps, the process raises more and more questions about geographic exactitude versus approximation. Along with that, you ask the prototype which parts of the data you can visualize at the same time versus what gets lost or is prioritized differently along the way.
Ammon starts here:
We started thinking about this project by beginning with the end in mind. I have found that bigger projects like this benefit from taking this approach first, as it narrows down the plethora of alternate paths that are available at the start of a project.
We started by thinking about the project being all done. It’s created, installed, and ready for people to interact with it. Now imagine someone has just finished interacting with the piece. The answer to the following two questions guide our design and development of the project as we go forward. What emotion do you want this person to have? What knowledge should they walk away with?
The answer to the first question was: Anticipation. They should feel a bit of anxiety and trepidation as they anticipate which pins will fall next, and how many will fall. Who’s next?
The answer to the second question was: The concentration of deaths occurs in the border states. With those two questions answered we could delve into how best to represent the anticipation and the knowledge. We came up with a few different alternatives but always came back to the idea of pins dropping through the map. As Jess explained above, the suddenness of some of the pins dropping away leads to anticipation for the next set of pins to drop. Where? How many? Who?
Data Brief. 2026 Sep 3;69:113224. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2026.113224. eCollection 2026 Aug.
ABSTRACT
Medieval and Renaissance Latin geographical works constitute a major source for understanding how space, places, and territories were described and conceptualised in pre-modern Europe. However, information about these works, their manuscript transmission, and the places they mention remains dispersed across catalogues, archives, and specialised scholarship. Here we present the IMAGO knowledge graph, a semantically structured dataset representing 343 Latin geographical works written between the 6th and the 15th centuries. The dataset integrates curated information provided by domain experts, including authors, works, manuscripts, printed editions, libraries, literary genres, and mentioned places. Data were initially collected in tabular form and subsequently enriched through semi-automatic reconciliation with external authority sources such as Wikidata and the MIRABILE digital archive. Domain experts further expanded the dataset using a dedicated annotation tool. The curated data were transformed into an OWL 2 DL knowledge graph aligned with the IMAGO ontology and published following FAIR and Linked Open Data principles. The knowledge graph was validated through automated reasoning, expert review, and query-based evaluation. The resulting dataset enables systematic exploration of textual, bibliographic, and spatial relationships within medieval and Renaissance geographical literature and supports reuse in historical, philological, and digital humanities research.
PMID:42757014 | PMC:PMC13583948 | DOI:10.1016/j.dib.2026.113224
Limited linguistic inclusivity in public health communication leaves many South African communities underserved, particularly regarding critical information on zoonotic diseases such as rabies. This pilot study addresses this gap by developing and evaluating AI-driven methods for delivering reliable rabies information to Sepedi speakers, a low-resource language group. The study presents a novel, curated Sepedi dataset of 60 question–answer pairs, created through a systematic pipeline: thematic analysis of authoritative English sources guided the synthetic generation of QA pairs, which were then translated and manually verified by a native-speaking expert. This dataset was used to compare two large language models, GPT-4o and Gemini-1.5 Flash, under both base and fine-tuned conditions. Evaluation used a human-centred rubric assessing fluency, accuracy, and cultural appropriateness. The findings reveal a key nuance in applying LLMs to low-resource domains. The base GPT-4o model, with strong foundational multilingual capabilities, outperformed all other configurations, including its own fine-tuned variant.
In contrast, fine-tuning provided a marked improvement for the less capable base Gemini model. This result indicates that fine-tuning can enhance weaker models; its benefits are not universal and may be outweighed by the strong zero-shot performance of state-of-the-art architectures when training data is scarce. The curated Sepedi rabies QA dataset will be released under an open licence to support future work in low-resource public health communication.
Background: HIPP is the HIFMB Integrative Postdoc Pool and publishes a thematic call for a cohort of early-career researchers once a year.
The HUMAN PROGRESS project aims to advance research in the natural sciences by drawing on methods, insights, and knowledge from across the humanities and social sciences. In doing so it also offers fresh frameworks of thinking for the humanities and social sciences, and works to develop the modern, integrated, and broadly interdisciplinary approach that is necessary to tackle complex environmental problems. Postdoctoral researchers funded under this project will work together as a team and in collaboration with experts from the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences. Our criterion of success is to make a demonstrable impact on research in the natural sciences by drawing on social data, humanities approaches, and ways of thinking. Along the way, all disciplines involved will have to adapt, extend, and to some extent automate their methodologies, to create impact in applications while maintaining a human perspective and mindset.
The title HUMAN PROGRESS is intended to provoke critical inquiry. It combines the progress-oriented thinking of the natural sciences and engineering with the word ‘human’ to invite critical reflection on how progress can be achieved that takes humans into account, from the initial phrasing of problems to the impacts of eventual solutions.
We invite applications for five positions, with the shared goal of leveraging modern approaches to bridge the gap between natural sciences and humanities and to strengthen existing collaborations between HIFMB and the Carl-von-Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.
Postdocs in the cohort will undertake independent projects in collaboration with a principal investigator and a strong interdisciplinary team of collaborators, while also meeting as a unit to work together on joint goals related to the overarching research topic.
Further information is available on the project website: HIPP 27: HUMAN PROGRESS – HIFMB Oldenburg
Project 2: Historical Observations of the Marine Environment
A central challenge of our time is discovering unknown knowns, that is, information contained in our datasets that we are not explicitly aware of. This project will examine processes of canonization that turn data into knowledge. In particular, we will consider a vast set of early modern maritime records and explore how the observations contained therein can be unlocked for modern environmental research. The project will combine established methods from historical research with modern approaches from machine learning and network science.
Your Tasks: The work will involve the analysis of historical documents, for example from the Prize Papers project; the creation of knowledge graphs using language models; and the automated analysis of knowledge graphs using methods from network science and cultural analytics.
Key questions include:
You’ll be working with an interdisciplinary team of experts that includes, among others, Dagmar Freist (History), Maximilian Schich (Cultural Analytics), Helmut Hillebrand (Biodiversity), and Thilo Gross (Network Science).
Further details: As a Helmholtz Institute, the HIFMB contributes to one of the Helmholtz Research Programs (currently ‚Changing Earth – Sustaining our Future‘) as part of Topic 6 (Marine and Polar Life). The cohort work will directly contribute to the scope and challenges of Topic 6 by researching how marine ecosystems will adapt and respond to human impacts (e.g., fishing and tourism), and by assessing options to remedy and mitigate human impacts. Within Topic 6, this cohort work attends especially to Subtopic 6.1, which is central to the HIFMB mission on „Future Ecosystem Functionality“, and Subtopic 6.4, „Use and Misuse of the Ocean“.
Your Profile: We are looking for an interdisciplinary researcher with relevant experience in history, especially in the analysis of historical records (from the 17th to the early 19th centuries), information science, with a focus on large-scale processing of cultural information, or related disciplines. The ideal candidate will have some experience in history, willingness to expand into other areas, and a general interest in team-oriented multidisciplinary research and in the generation, critical reflection, and representation of knowledge.
Requirements include:
Further Information:
Please note that the general conditions listed serve as a guide and may vary depending on the specific area of application.
For further information on the specific position, please reach out to Prof Dr Thilo Gross (thilo.gross@hifmb.de).
If you have any general questions about the application process, our Recruiting team will be glad to support you – please contact Elisabeth Wildt (bewerbungsmanagement@awi.de, +49 471 4831-2236).
In this overview you will find further contact persons for various matters.
This is a full-time position, limited to 3 years. It is also suitable for part-time employment. The salary will be paid in accordance with the Collective Agreement for the Public Service of the Federation (Tarifvertrag des öffentlichen Dienstes, TVöD Bund), up to salary level 13. The place of employment will be Oldenburg.
All postdocs will register with AWI’s postdoc office PROCEED and thus gain access to a set of tailor-made career development tools.
We offer:
AWI values diversity and actively promotes gender parity, as well as an open, inclusive environment that provides equal opportunities. We are convinced that diverse teams and a variety of perspectives enrich our work and our daily collaboration. In a continuous process of learning and reflection, we aim to ensure that all our employees can be themselves and feel a sense of belonging. We welcome applications from qualified people regardless of binary and non-binary genders, race and nationality, ethnic and social background, religion, age, disabilities, neurodivergence, sexual orientation, and other identities.
Applicants with disabilities will be given preference when equal qualifications are present.
AWI fosters work-family compatibility in various ways. And as a new international member of our team, you can be sure that we will help you settle in. Our Family Office and International Office will be glad to support you, even before you start at AWI.
We look forward to your application!
Please submit your application online only by July 20th, 2026. We kindly ask you to apply in English. No photo is required – we value your qualifications and experience.
Interviews are planned for the mid until end of August, 2026.
Employment for this post is subject to the provisions of the German Act on Fixed-Term Employment Contracts in Academia (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz – WissZeitVG). According to WissZeitVG § 2.1, researchers may in general be employed in Germany on fixed-term contracts for a maximum of twelve years before and after their doctorate. Previous academic fixed-term employment in Germany counts, in principle, towards this maximum limit, while academic positions abroad usually do not.
Applicants are required to submit an extended cover letter (max. 2 pages) describing their fit to the position and criteria, and complete the template CV provided (please do not submit a CV in another format).
If you are applying from abroad and are interested in academic positions in Germany, it may generally be helpful to check and possibly have your degrees recognized in advance via the ANABIN database (https://anabin.kmk.org/cms/public/startseite).
Reference number: 26/58/G/HIPP-b
This research center is part of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers. With more than 42,000 employees and an annual budget of over € 5 billion, the Helmholtz Association is Germany’s largest scientific organisation.
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