Open Position: Postdoc ERC Synergy MiDRASH

Postdoc ERC Synergy MiDRASH in Paris

The Ecole pratique des hautes études, PSL-University in Paris, France is hiring a postdoctoral research associate in Hebrew Literature to work on the ERC Synergy project MiDRASH (Migrations of Textual and Scribal Traditions via Large-Scale Computational Analysis of Medieval Manuscripts in Hebrew Script) for the team led by Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra.

The project undertaken in very close interaction with teams led by Judith Olszowy-Schlanger (EPHE, PSL), Nachum Dershowitz (Tel Aviv-University), Avi Shmidman (Bar Ilan University), as well as the National Library of Israel and Haifa University. With a total budget of over 10 million euros, this is the largest publicly funded project in Jewish Studies. It aims to revolutionize our understanding of the literary process, text and manuscript production in Ancient and Medieval Judaism by striving to automatically transcribe ca. 30.000 manuscripts in Hebrew characters until the 16th century, annotate them linguistically, calculate the intertextuality graph and perform a series of case-studies as well as improving or developing the algorithms necessary for that. For a brief presentation of the project please check https://escripta.hypotheses.org/500 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqAWSw-vtn0

In collaboration with Daniel Stökl in Paris, the researcher will be responsible for supervising, improving and running the layout segmentation and transcription and automatic text-alignment processes with eScriptorium, kraken and other tools that will be developed in the project. He or she will establish the priority list for the manuscripts, trace the progress, and exploit the results to enrich existing catalogues and discover new texts. The researcher will collaborate with other teams to establish and disseminate the best standards for segmentation and transcription. He or she will play a central role participating in many studies on the development of algorithms and computational analyses of layout, paleography and texts.

Office: Campus Condorcet, Paris

Application deadline: 14 July 2023 Midnight, Central European Summer Time

Interview date: 15-20 July 2023

Starting date of the contract: 1 October 2023

Length of the contract: 2 years, extensible by 2y twice (6y total).

Gross Salary: at least 2643 € / month

Qualifications, Knowledge and Experience:

Essential

PhD in Biblical Studies, Jewish Studies or Computer Sciences

Excellent Hebrew

Very good written and spoken English

Expertise in working with catalogs

Expertise with the edition of Hebrew manuscripts

Good programming skills, preferably in python.

Good expertise in data modeling (XML and/or SQL)

Good communication skills

Team-person

Pluses:

Experience with Machine Learning

Experience in working with HTR, in particular with eScriptorium / kraken

Experience in working with different periods of Hebrew literature

Experience in Hebrew codicology and paleography

Aramaic

Judeo-Arabic

French

CIDOC CRM

Experience in working with NLP

Experience in computational textual criticism

For application please send

• Letter of motivation
• CV
• Sample of a published work or a thesis chapter
• List of publications (including github repo and links to digital publications of data and/or code)
• Two recommendation letters

To:

daniel dot stoekl at ephe dot psl dot eu

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