This research assistant position is part of the ERC Starting Grant project “MOOVA - Making Old Objects Valuable Again. The Cultural, Economic Challenges and Sustainability Opportunities of Antiques in the 21st Century,” led by Prof. Anne-Sophie V. Radermecker.

Regardless of their cultural significance, many “ordinary” antiques remain on the margins of cultural institutions and scholarly research. As a result, the question of how everyday antiques are safeguarded, valued, marketed, perceived, and consumed remains largely underexplored, placing material evidence of our visual culture in a critical situation, especially in view of the technological transition faced by this ageing business. Using old objects as a laboratory for transdisciplinary research, MOOVA aims to 1) highlight the complex cultural value of ordinary antiques and the patrimonial role of local antique dealers as safeguarders of informal heritage; 2) explore the supply and demand for antiques in the digital era; 3) understand the perceived value of antiques by Gen Z; and 4) develop theoretical and applied models for reassessing the meaning, relevance, and value of those objects nowadays. MOOVA’s originality lies in its focus (European decorative arts), transversal approach (cross-objects, markets, countries), and combination of theories, data, and methods from various disciplines (heritage studies, cultural economics, cognitive science, etc.). MOOVA's academic outputs will deal with vital issues such as the preservation of local heritage, audience renewal, and local place branding.

Duties and responsibilities

We are looking for a part-time research assistant specialized in data analysis, eager to explore a set of yet under-researched art market data at the macrolevel (mostly online auction and private sales). In close collaboration with the PI and the MOOVA team, your main tasks will be to:

• Map the antiques business online (identification of online platforms, examination of websites’ structure, etc.);
• Monitor the online market for antiques on a regular basis (at the macrolevel and per category of objects);
• Collect, clean, organize, store, analyze, and interpret large amount of data (according to the FAIR data principle);
• Generate innovative solutions to deal with imperfect data and solve technical issues encountered in art market research;
• Contribute to analyzing and storing data, writing reports/articles, and managing MOOVA website.

Candidates interested in combining this job with a 4-year complementary part-time position in database programming (0.5 ETP - 2023-2027, funded by BELSPO BRAIN-BE 2.0) are invited to specify their interest in their application. For further information, please write to Anne-Sophie.Radermecker@ulb.be or Aude.Alexandre@fine-arts-museum.be

Candidate’s profile

Excellent skills in data scraping and mining are the main requirements for this job, irrespective of your master’s degree. Experience in database programming is considered a significant advantage, as well as your ability to learn about the economy of the arts. We expect you to have:

• Provable knowledge and experience with ETL and statistical packages (Python, SAS, SPSS, R, Spark), especially for data scrapping. Other relevant specializations are very much welcome (programming languages, supervised machine learning, etc.);
• Technical expertise in data preparation, data models, data mining, and segmentation;
• Good communication, relational, and organizational skills.