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Dear list members,

I would like to call your attention to the following job opening in the ERC Consolidator Grant-funded Dissident Networks Project (DISSINET, https://dissinet.cz), where we use various computational methods to shed new light on medieval religious dissidence and inquisition. We are now searching to extend the team by hiring a computational linguist, programming Latinist, or NLP specialist to join the adventure. The role will be to lead the constitution of a corpus of OCR-ed editions of inquisition records and, in collaboration with the larger team, study features related to the language of those records such as their vocabulary, the style of recording, the construction of deposition narratives, the use of language for social control, etc.

In contrast to a call I circulated earlier, we are not only open to postdocs but also to those who have not yet completed their PhD studies, and even those who would like to do their PhD in the Study of Religions with us at Masaryk University on the topic of this research strand within DISSINET.

The deadline for the submission of applications is 15 September 2021.

For more information, please see below.

I would be very grateful if you could forward this message to candidates potentially interested in this position.

All the best,

David Zbíral

Number of open positions: 1

Expected start: 1 November 2021 (negotiable)

Duration: 31 October 2022 (first contract), 31 August 2026 (very probable extension based on performance review)

Deadline for applications: 15 September 2021 23:59 CEST (UTC+2)

Full call and submission: https://www.muni.cz/en/about-us/careers/vacancies/64897

The Dissident Networks Project (DISSINET, https://dissinet.cz/) - an ERC Consolidator Grant-funded research initiative based at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic) - offers a full-time research fellowship in computational text analysis. The research of the successful applicant will focus on the discursive patterns in medieval inquisitorial records, with the aim of shining a new light on the production of these texts, their discourses, and the religious cultures they describe.

We are searching for a research fellow with one of the following types of profile:

(a) programming Latinist, or digital humanist, with competence in one or more historical languages and some experience in programming; or

(b) computational linguist, NLP specialist or text mining specialist, with interest in history or historical languages;

(c) another kind of mixed/interdisciplinary profile, with some of the previously mentioned competencies and strong interest in working on a historical research project.

The successful candidate will develop their own research direction in consultation with the Principal Investigator (Dr. David Zbíral), focusing on the computational text processing and analysis of medieval inquisition records.

DISSINET also works extensively on the manual coding of medieval inquisitorial material, offering a significant close-reading layer of data. We focus on various computational approaches to Christian dissent and inquisition, also including social network analysis, socio-semantic network analysis, and geographic information science: the successful candidate will have the opportunity to produce mixed-methodology work in this collaborative context. The ERC-funded position thus represents a unique opportunity for building a truly cutting-edge research profile.

The position is residential (although with reasonable flexibility for pandemic-related travel restrictions). Brno is a very pleasant university city in the Czech Republic, European Union, ca. 2 hours by direct train connection from Vienna and Prague, and offers all the opportunities of a modern metropolis.

Please see https://www.muni.cz/en/about-us/careers/vacancies/64897 for more information.

Dr David Zbíral

Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded Dissident Networks Project (https://dissinet.cz)

Associate Professor

Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts

Department for the Study of Religions, Centre for the Digital Research of Religion

david.zbiral@mail.muni.czmailto:david.zbiral@mail.muni.cz