Impresso2 is hiring a Postdoc in Digital / Computational History (28 months)

As part of the team, you will conduct innovative, data-driven research in media history, contribute historical expertise to the co-design of Impresso’s web app and data lab, and engage with the computational humanities research community through outreach activities like tutorials and workshops.

This position offers an exciting opportunity to work with an international, interdisciplinary team of renowned experts in digital humanities, machine learning, design, and history, exploring new pathways in integrating and analyzing 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

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

In a nutshell

• 28 months full time (40h/week) fixed term contract
• Earliest possible start date is November 2024
• Application deadline 1. August 2024
• Annual gross salary of 83099 EUR.
• Applications must include a Curriculum Vitae and a Cover letter and must be submitted via the University of Luxembourg’s recruitment portal.

For any open questions, please contact Marten Düring.

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.

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.