Dear all,

Perhaps some of you or your contacts might be interested in the following two research positions in the ERC Consolidator Grant-funded Dissident Networks Project (DISSINET, https://dissinet.cz):

Two positions in the Dissident Networks Project

The Dissident Networks Project (DISSINET, https://dissinet.cz/) – an ERC Consolidator Grant-funded research initiative based at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic) – currently offers two positions:

1. PhD studentship or research fellowship in medieval history (deadline 30 Sept 2021)
2. Research fellowship in computational linguistics / corpora / NLP (deadline 15 Sept 2021)

1. PhD studentship or research fellowship in medieval history

Full information: https://www.muni.cz/en/about-us/careers/vacancies/65077. 

Deadline for applications: 30 September 2021 23:59 (CET – Prague).

This is a 3-year Ph.D. studentship or research fellowship (from November 2021 to October 2024) for historians with a medieval focus. 

The focus of research for the successful candidate will be the computational study of medieval religious dissent and inquisition, and will be founded on medieval inquisition records (c. 1230-1520).

We are looking for candidates with background in history, medieval studies, study of religions, medieval Latin language and literature or a similar field. They can be either:

(a) M.A. graduates interested in enrolling in doctoral studies in the Study of Religion at Masaryk University; or

(b) Ph.D. candidates approaching the completion of studies; or

(c) holders of a doctoral degree.

A successful M.A. graduate applying for a doctoral position would receive the normal doctoral stipend for full-time Ph.D. students at Masaryk University, and would in addition be offered a contract for their participation in the DISSINET project (weighted at 50% of a full-time employee). They would be assigned a Ph.D. supervisor within the team.

A successful Ph.D. candidate approaching the completion of their studies and applying for a post-doctoral position would be able to negotiate the amount of work time they can initially dedicate to the project (minimum 50% required).

A successful holder of a doctoral degree applying for a post-doctoral position would be offered a full-time role.

The successful candidate will develop their own research direction in consultation with the Principal Investigator (Dr. David Zbíral). They will receive hands-on training, building on their core skills as medievalists through the use of computational techniques. The ERC-funded positions thus represent a unique opportunity for building a truly cutting-edge research profile.

Requirements:

• M.A. or Ph.D. degree in history, medieval studies, medieval Latin language and literature or a similar field.
• Latin language.
• Competence in historical research.
• Competence in academic writing.
• Computer-friendly mindset.
• English language (C1 or higher).

Other qualifications of interest to the project:

• Further languages relevant for reading the historiography of medieval heresy and inquisition.
• Experience with structured data (spreadsheets, databases).
• Interest in social scientific approaches to history.
• Experience in heresy & inquisition studies, notarial records, medieval religion or late medieval history.

We do not expect candidates to possess all of these “other qualifications of interest”, and recognise there are other qualifications beyond this list that can enhance DISSINET’s research profile.

We offer:

• Freedom to pursue your intellectual interests and to work creatively across disciplines in an exciting frontier-research project.
• Growth in interdisciplinary research.
• Competitive salary commensurate with an ERC-funded project.
• Individual research budget for participating in conferences and workshops, choosing books and software to be purchased, etc. (ca. 4,000 € each year).
• Participation in writing high-profile publications in history, social network analysis, and the digital humanities.
• Friendly and informal working environment.

Responsibilities:

• Leading a key research strand within the larger project, concerning selected sets of medieval inquisitorial records.
• Compiling structured datasets on the basis of inquisitorial records.
• Co-authoring articles (incl. as lead author).
• Participating in the team’s discussions, meetings, tutorials, and other activities.
• Contributing to the project’s visibility (papers at conferences, publications, online outcomes, social media, etc.).
• Reading and summarizing literature, contributing to the project’s annotated bibliography.
• Organizational and administrative responsibilities related to the project.

Please see https://www.muni.cz/en/about-us/careers/vacancies/65077 for the details.

2. Research fellowship in computational linguistics / corpora / NLP (deadline 15 Sept 2021)

Full information: https://www.muni.cz/en/about-us/careers/vacancies/64897 

Deadline for applications: 15 September 2021 23:59 CET (UTC+1)

The research of the successful applicant will focus on the discursive patterns in medieval inquisitorial records, with the aim of shining a new light on the production of these texts, their discourses, and the religious cultures they describe.

We are searching for a research fellow with one of the following types of profile:

(a) digital humanist, with competence in one or more historical languages and some experience in programming; or

(b) computational linguist, NLP specialist or text mining specialist, with interest in history or historical languages;

(c) another kind of mixed/interdisciplinary profile, with some of the previously mentioned competencies and strong interest in working on a historical research project.

The successful candidate will develop their own research direction in consultation with the Principal Investigator (Dr. David Zbíral), focusing on the computational text processing and analysis of medieval inquisition records.

DISSINET also works extensively on the manual coding of medieval inquisitorial material, offering a significant close-reading layer of data. We focus on various computational approaches to Christian dissent and inquisition, also including social network analysis, socio-semantic network analysis, and geographic information science: the successful candidate will have the opportunity to produce mixed-methodology work in this collaborative context. The ERC-funded position thus represents a unique opportunity for building a truly cutting-edge research profile.

The position is residential (although with reasonable flexibility for pandemic-related travel restrictions). Brno is a very pleasant university city ca. 2 hours by direct train connection from Vienna and Prague, and offers all the opportunities of a modern metropolis.

Requirements:

• M.A., MSc. or Ph.D. degree in a relevant field.
• Strong interest in historical research and the project’s topic.
• Experience in computational research of textual corpora.
• Ability to learn new techniques and adapt existing ones (e.g., customize available tools to the Latin of inquisitorial sources).
• Programming skills (Python or R).
• Digital text representation and annotation standards (esp. TEI/XML).
• Competence in academic writing.
• English language (C1 or higher).
• Autonomy, reliability, and ability to work in close team collaboration.

Other competencies of interest to the project:

• Historical languages (Latin, Middle English…).
• Distributional semantics, stylometry.
• Experience with repositories of digital texts.
• Data standards and interoperability (e.g., RDF, linked data).
• Version control (e.g., GitHub, GitLab…).

We do not expect candidates to possess all of these “other competencies of interest”, and recognise there may be other skills beyond this list that could enhance DISSINET’s research profile.

We offer:

• Freedom to pursue your intellectual interests and to work creatively across disciplines in an exciting frontier-research project.
• Growth in interdisciplinary research.
• Competitive salary commensurate with an ERC-funded project.
• Individual research budget (ca. 4,000 € each year) in addition to regular salary.
• Participation in writing high-profile publications in digital humanities, computational social science, network analysis, and history.
• Friendly and informal working environment.

Responsibilities:

• Building a key research strand within DISSINET with a focus on the discursive patterns in medieval inquisitorial records.
• Leading the constitution of a corpus of medieval inquisitorial records.
• Supervising research assistants helping with the mark-up of OCR-ed texts.
• Co-authoring articles (incl. as lead author).
• Participating in the team’s discussions, meetings, tutorials, and other activities.
• Contributing to the project’s visibility (papers at conferences, publications, online outcomes, social media, etc.).
• Reading and excerpting literature.
• Organizational and administrative responsibilities related to the project.

Please see https://www.muni.cz/en/about-us/careers/vacancies/64897 for details.