Doctoral researcher (m/f/d) on the project “Contextual scientometrics – Uncovering and understanding referencing patterns to the ancient canon in modern scholarly discourses” (MECANO – MSCA Doctoral Network)

5 Feb 2024
Job Information

Organisation/Company

Leipzig University

Department

Institute for Computer Science

Research Field

Information science
Language sciences » Philology

Researcher Profile

First Stage Researcher (R1)

Country

Germany

Application Deadline

8 Mar 2024 - 23:59 (Europe/Berlin)

Type of Contract

Temporary

Job Status

Full-time

Offer Starting Date

1 Sep 2024

Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?

HE / MSCA

Marie Curie Grant Agreement Number

101120349

Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure?

No

Offer Description

About Leipzig University

Founded in 1409, Leipzig University is one of Germany’s largest universities and a leader in research and medical training. With around 30,000 students and more than 5000 members of staff across 14 faculties, it is at the heart of the vibrant and outward-looking city of Leipzig. Leipzig University offers an innovative and international working environment as well as an exciting range of career opportunities in research, teaching, knowledge and technology transfer, infrastructure and administration.

The Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Institute of Computer Science seeks to fill the above position from 1 September 2024. This PhD position is part of the project MECANO (Mechanics of Canon Formation and the Transmission of Knowledge from Graeco-Roman Antiquity) that has received funding from Horizon Europe Program for Research and Innovation under the MSCA Doctoral Networks 2022, Grant Agreement No. 101120349.

 

Context: The MECANO MSCA Doctoral Network

MECANO aims to advance the understanding of the mechanics of canon formation and knowledge transmission of ancient Greek and Latin texts. It will look at a) how texts, ideas or authors become canonical by being cited, translated, studied, imitated, excerpted, or compiled by later authors, and b) how such implicit canons have changed across time and space by being received in different cultural, intellectual and linguistic environments. To study the dynamics of canonicity from a longitudinal perspective, MECANO will combine qualitative approaches to intellectual history and reception studies with applications of digital and computational methods on extensive text corpora. MSCA Doctoral Networks are research and training programmes with the goal of training highly skilled doctoral candidates, stimulate their creativity, enhance their innovation capacities and boost their employability in the long-term. For MECANO, this means responding to the need for historically conscious and digitally skilled Humanities PhDs and training the PhD candidates to tackle the challenges of modern engagement with the topics of canonicity, diversity, and cultural heritage. Being part of an MSCA Doctoral Network means taking part in networking activities and spending time abroad. Each PhD candidate will be co-supervised by two academics within the consortium; they will be based at one of the universities of MECANO and visit the university of their co-supervisor for a research stay, as well as have a shorter internship at an associated partner. They will be expected to take full part in the training programme, consisting of summer schools, workshops, a regular online seminar, and other activities. MECANO is committed to creating an environment in which all talents can develop to their maximum potential, regardless of gender, age, cultural origin, nationality or disability. We particularly encourage candidates from traditionally underrepresented groups to apply.

Vacancies are open to applicants of all nationalities who comply with the mobility requirement of not having resided in the country of the MECANO university that will host them (university of the main supervisor) for more than 12 months in the 36 months preceding appointment. Applicants must not hold a doctoral degree in any other field or have failed a corresponding doctoral examination at another higher education institution. Please note that MECANO is advertising positions for a total of 10 candidates within its framework, who will be based at 5 participating universities. Applications for each position must be submitted separately. It is possible to apply for more than one position, in which case the applicant must send a separate email to [email protected] , stating this and indicating their preference. The recruitment process will be done centrally by the MECANO selection committee.

 

PhD Project Description (“Contextual scientometrics – Uncovering and understanding referencing patterns to the ancient canon in modern scholarly discourses”)

This is a full-time PhD position with the expected start in September 2024. This PhD position will be based at Leipzig University under the main supervision of Prof. Manuel Burghardt (Computational Humanities, Institute of Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science). The PhD candidate is expected to visit Leuven, Belgium for a research stay of 6 months to be co-supervised by Prof. Mark Depauw (KU Leuven, Faculty of Arts, Ancient History) and Prof. Bart Thijs (KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics), and to do an internship of 3 months at German National Library in Leipzig, Germany.

The PhD project revolves around the notion that in modern academia, famous authors, thinkers and philosophers from the ancient world continue to shape scholarly discourses. However, precisely which canonical references we find in specific disciplines, and how often they are referred to, is yet to be investigated. The specific objectives of this PhD project are therefore to build a large, multi-disciplinary corpus of scientific journals from JSTOR, reuse existing computational workflows from the Trismegistos project (TM) and detect ancient canonic references in this corpus. The main analytical objective will be to analyse the extracted references in a scientometric way, allowing us to investigate which of the canonic thinkers are quoted the most in different disciplines and whether there are any diachronic trends to be found. Furthermore, we are interested in co-citation networks, which will help us to understand which canonic authors are frequently mentioned together and may be even forming canonic clusters. In addition to these more traditional scientometric approaches, a core methodological objective is to add a distant reading perspective to the analyses, which allows us to put the canonical references in context and better understand their usage, shedding light on the influence of the ancient canons on the modern academic.

Leipzig University awards the academic degree of PhD in Computer Science with a specialisation in Digital Humanities on the basis of a written academic thesis in accordance with the provisions of the doctoral regulations. Regulations and documents are available at https://www.gkr.uni-leipzig.de/forschung/promotion .

 

Tasks

•       Finish a PhD thesis (in English) within 36 months

•       Participation in the general training programme of the MECANO doctoral network

•       Presentations of intermediate research results at workshops and conferences

•       Participation in the intellectual life of the institutions of the supervisors of the PhD project

•       Research stay at German National Library, Leipzig, Germany (3 months) and KU Leuven, Belgium (6 months)

Requirements

Research Field

Other

Education Level

Master Degree or equivalent

Additional Information
Benefits

About the position

•       Fixed term of 36 months

•       100% of a full-time position

•       Planned remuneration: gross amount of approx. 3,200 Euro (3,750 Euro if eligible for family allowance)

What we offer

•       A highly dynamic, collaborative and interdisciplinary working environment in a modern workplace.

•       Flexible working hours and work-life balance.

•       English as working language.

•       Leipzig as an attractive city with rich culture and beautiful surroundings, where international visitors usually find it easy to settle in.

 

 

Eligibility criteria

Requirements

•       Master’s degree in Digital Humanities, Data Science, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science, Information Science or any other relevant field of expertise, held by time of appointment, with an MA thesis of high quality (if the degree is not yet obtained at the time of application, a statement by the applicant’s supervisor should confirm that it will be obtained by time of appointment);

•       Well-developed research skills, including the ability to formulate relevant research questions and hypotheses as well as descriptive, analytical and computational skills;

•       Excellent competence in the application of state-of-the-art methods from the field of text mining / natural language processing (large language models, word embeddings, etc.) and ideally experience in the areas of scientometrics, digital philology or digital classics

•       Good competence in spoken and written English

•       Independent thinker, team player

•       Mobility rule (as part of the MECANO programme): the candidate has not resided in Germany for more than 12 months in the 36 months preceding appointment

 

Selection process

Please send your application electronically as a single PDF to Sylvia Frömmert (secretary of computational humanities group), [email protected] by March 8th, 2024. Please note that it is not possible to guarantee confidentiality and rule out unauthorised access by third parties when communicating by unencrypted email. In case you are invited as a candidate, all interviews will be held virtually. Please provide the following documents as part of your application:

•       CV (max. 2 pages).

•       Cover letter (600–800 words) covering which qualifications make you suitable for the position and how this PhD position aligns with your scholarly interests, as well as your motivation for being part of an MSCA Doctoral Network which includes international mobility and an internship period.

•       Names and contact details (email address) of two academic referees. You must have the permission of the academic referee to use their name and contact details. They may be asked to provide a reference letter at a later stage.

•       Master degree and transcript of records. If the degree is not yet obtained at the time of application, a statement by the applicant’s supervisor should confirm that it will be obtained by time of appointment.

•       Writing sample in English (ca. 7000 words); this may be a published paper or your Master thesis.

The recruitment process will be done centrally by the MECANO selection committee. Leipzig University aims to increase the proportion of women in positions of responsibility and therefore expressly invites qualified women to apply. Severely disabled persons – or persons deemed legally equal to them under Book IX of the German Social Code – are encouraged to apply and will be given preference in the case of equal suitability.

Additional comments

For general questions about the MECANO MSCA Doctoral Network, please contact Daria Kondakova ([email protected] ). For specific questions about the “Contextual scientometrics” project, please contact Manuel Burghardt ([email protected] ).

Website for additional job details

https://www.kuleuven.be/lectio/research/mecano-msca-doctoral-network

Work Location(s)

Number of offers available

1

Company/Institute

Leipzig University, Institute for Computer Science, Computational Humanities Group

Country

Germany

City

Leipzig

Postal Code

04109

Street

Augustusplatz 10

Geofield

Where to apply

E-mail

[email protected]

Contact

State/Province

Saxony

City

Leipzig

Website

https://ch.uni-leipzig.de/

Street

Augustusplatz 10

Postal Code

04109

E-Mail

[email protected]

STATUS: EXPIRED