Postdoctoral Researcher in Digital/Computational History

The University | About us...

The University of Luxembourg is an international research university with a distinctly multilingual and interdisciplinary character. The University was founded in 2003 and counts more than 6,700 students and more than 2,000 employees from around the world. The University's faculties and interdisciplinary centres focus on research in the areas of Computer Science and ICT Security, Materials Science, European and International Law, Finance and Financial Innovation, Education, Contemporary and Digital History. In addition, the University focuses on cross-disciplinary research in the areas of Data Modelling and Simulation as well as Health and System Biomedicine. Times Higher Education ranks the University of Luxembourg #3 worldwide for its "international outlook," #20 in the Young University Ranking 2021 and among the top 250 universities worldwide.

The Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) is a research centre for the study, analysis and public dissemination of contemporary history of Luxembourg and Europe with a particular focus on digital methods and tools for doing innovative historical research. It serves as a catalyst for innovative and creative scholarship and new forms of public dissemination and societal engagement with history.

Impresso - Media Monitoring of the Past II. Beyond Borders: Connecting Historical Newspapers and Radio is an interdisciplinary research project that leverages an unprecedented corpus of newspaper and radio archives, and uses machine learning to pursue a paradigm shift in the processing, semantic enrichment, representation, exploration and study of historical newspaper and radio collections across modalities, time, languages, and national borders.

Impresso is carried out by the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital history (C2DH) and Swiss partners DHLAB at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the University of Lausanne's History department, the University of Zürich's Institute for Computational Linguistics. The project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).

We are looking for a scholar in the field of computational humanities / digital history to complete our Luxembourg-based team. Impresso has the objective to innovate historical research practices through original research and through the design and development of novel interfaces to access enriched and semantically linked data across languages and modalities.

Your Role...

As part of the team, you will conduct methodologically innovative, data-driven research in (media) history, actively contribute historical expertise to the co-design of Impresso's web app and data lab, and liaise with the computational humanities research community amongst other outreach activities, such as tutorials and workshops.

This position offers an exciting opportunity to work in an international and interdisciplinary team with renowned experts in the domain of digital humanities, machine learning, design, and history and to explore new pathways in the integration and analysis of digitized sources across languages and modalities.

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct original data-driven historical research on the theme of "media influences"
• Develop innovative computational research methods building on Impresso's corpus of multilingual newspaper and radio sources provided by a network of Western European partners
• Contribute to the design of the Impresso web app and the Impresso data lab together with a team of designers and experts in natural language processing and history
• Engage in outreach activities such as workshops, conferences, trainings and teaching and user evaluations
• Contribute to other Impresso work packages as needed and participate in on-site meetings with partners in Switzerland

For any questions regarding the advertised position, please contact Asst Prof. Marten Düring ().

What we expect from you…

• Demonstrable experience in humanities research using computational methods
• PhD in history or a related field or, alternatively a PhD in computer science with experience in conducting historical research
• Ability to meet deadlines and demonstrate methodological, organised, pragmatic and effective approaches to your work
• Fluency in English is required; knowledge of French, German and/or Dutch are considered an asset

Advantageous are:

• Knowledge of at least one programming language, preferably Python
• Knowledge of machine learning, more specifically representation learning
• Knowledge of current debates in media history
• Experience in working with data derived from historical newspaper and radio collections

How to apply...

Applications should be submitted online (in English) and include:

• Curriculum Vitae
• Cover letter

We ensure a full consideration for applications received by1st of August 2024.Please apply formally through the HR system. Applications by email will not be considered.

The University of Luxembourg embraces inclusion and diversity as key values. We are fully committed to removing any discriminatory barrier related to gender, and not only, in recruitment and career progression of our staff.

General information:

• Contract Type: Fixed Term Contract 28 Month
• Earliest start date: November 2024
• Work Hours: Full Time 40.0 Hours per Week
• Location: Belval
• Job Reference: UOL06506

The yearly gross salary for every Postdoctoral Researcher at the UL is EUR 83099 (full time)