Ph.D. Candidate Trifecta Food History - DHLab Amsterdam

Ph.D. Candidate Trifecta Food History

What you will be doing
The mass scale digitization of sources provides the tantalising possibility of studying complex concepts and entities over long periods of time, across thousands or even millions of sources, and from a myriad of perspectives. However, automated methods for analysing these “big data” are inadequate for complex concepts because they have not confronted the fundamental challenges of identity (i.e. what are they exactly and how are they perceived), change (i.e. how have they evolved over time) and the long tail (i.e. what low-frequent contexts do they connect to). The ERC-funded TRIFECTA project will combine language technology and semantic web research to create a database that can be used to explore the cultural and societal contexts of contentious entities and concepts in the domain of food history.

You will work with a postdoctoral researcher on Tracing Contentious Entities and Concepts in Food History. In this sub-project, you and the postdoctoral researcher will develop technology to identify ingredients and food-related concepts from historical resources, as well as analysing how food habits and discourse around food have changed over time. On the digital methodological strand, this sub-project will study the impact of digital processing tools on the hermeneutical practice of historical research. For more information about the project, see: https://trifecta.dhlab.nl

What we are offering
You will be working in the Digital Humanities Lab, a research group at KNAW Humanities Cluster in Amsterdam. DHLab investigates and develops innovative, data-driven, and computationally strong methods for humanities research. We develop computational methods for connecting collections and resources, computational heuristics and tool criticism, and we aim to bridge qualitative and quantitative methods. The team publishes in diverse outlets such as Computational Humanities Research, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, Digital Humanities Benelux, and the Extended Semantic Web Conference.

During the project, you will be working towards your Ph.D. and receive further training in working in interdisciplinary digital humanities projects, preparing you for a career in research or innovation.

Your workplace
Our offices are located in a historical building in downtown Amsterdam. Researchers work together in projects and a shared office space and can choose to spend part of their time at home. DHLab aims to be an open and inquisitive, safe work environment where your input counts, not your job title. We value open conversations about pros and cons of a particular idea and approach based on content, not status.

For more information
Please contact: Dr. Marieke van Erp, principal investigator & DHLab department head

Application procedure
Please submit a CV, cover letter that includes a motivation on why you want to work on this project and a 1-page research statement. If you have one or more publications, include the publication that best represents your research. You will be able to upload this as a separate document after finishing the application in the system and you can log in with the account information that is sent to you by email.

Interviews will take place online on 14 May, 23 May or 7 June 2024.

For this job, you must be willing to move to the Netherlands and obtain a working proficiency of the Dutch language. The starting date of the position is between 1 September and 1 November 2024.