Within the context of the ID-N project NIKAW, funded by the Special Research Fund (BOF) of KU Leuven, we are inviting applications for two PhD positions on the subjects of (1) machine learning for information extraction from ancient texts and (2) social network analysis for the transmission of ideas in the Ancient World.

The set of thoughts, ideas, and beliefs that are shared, discussed, and enriched in a society is a complex and dynamic reality, constantly fed by and giving way to historical events. Nowadays, the easy access to social network and telecommunication data, online publications, and, for instance, book sales data, has increased our possibilities of analyzing this flow of information incredibly. In this project, however, we want to investigate how we can map the circulation of ideas and identify pivotal individuals in past societies, namely the Graeco-Roman world, whose fragmented history, encompassing many centuries, can only be studied through partial remainders. To this end, the NIKAW project aims to exploit textual information from the ancient world to reconstruct the transmission of knowledge across multilingual, geographically and chronologically extended communities.

More information on the two positions can be found at

(1) https://www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jobsite/jobs/60138308?hl=en&lang=en (2) https://www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jobsite/jobs/60138293?hl=en&lang=en

For inquiries, please contact Margherita Fantoli (margherita.fantoli@kuleuven.be) or Jens Bürger (jens.burger@kuleuven.be)

Deadline for applications: Thursday, September 8, 2022