College of Arts, Social Sciences & Celtic Studies
School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Ref. No. 010301
Applications are invited from suitably qualified candidates for a fulltime, fixed term position as a Postdoctoral Researcher with discipline of Classics at the University of Galway, Ireland. This position is funded by Irish Research Council and is available from September 1, 2024 to contract end date of August 31, 2025.
Global and Local Scholarship on Annotated Manuscripts (GLOSSAM) is a four-year research project (2022–2026) based in the College of Arts, Social Sciences & Celtic Studies at the University of Galway, directed by Dr Pádraic Moran. See: http://www.glossam.ie/
GLOSSAM will enhance our understanding of reading, education, scholarship, and knowledge transfer in the pre-modern world, by creating new narratives, conceptual frameworks, digital tools and methodological models for the study of glosses.
Glosses are the paratexts transmitted between the lines and in the margins of manuscript books, micro-texts that control how the central texts were read and interpreted. Glosses are as ubiquitous as books themselves. Recent research has discovered that they are a truly global phenomenon, found throughout the literate cultures of Europe, the Middle East, and South and East Asia. The potential now exists to create a new narrative for the history of glossing in an expanded global context
Salary: Postdoctoral Researcher salary scale €42,782 - €54,965 per annum, (subject to the project’s funding limitations), and pro rata for shorter and/or part-time contracts.
The default position for all new public sector appointments is the 1st point of the salary scale. This may be reviewed, and consideration afforded to appointment at a higher point on the payscale (subject to the project’s funding limitations), where evidence of prior years’ equivalent experience is accepted in determining placement on the scale above point 1, subject to the maximum of the scale.
Research Salary Scales - University of Galway.
Closing date for receipt of applications is 17:00 (Irish Time) on 23rd May 2024. It will not be possible to consider applications received after the closing date.
Interviews are planned to be held during the week beginning June 17, 2024
Please review full job description for further details and essential requirements.
The successful candidate will explore the application of Data Science methods, in particular Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning, to the analysis of historical texts.
Glosses are short texts that provide a running commentary on other (primary) texts and are usually found written between the lines or in the margins of medieval manuscripts (handwritten books). This project focuses on manuscripts from the eighth and ninth centuries AD, where the primary texts are usually in Latin, and glosses are written in Latin, Old Irish and other historical languages. The corpus of texts for this project may be found in Gloss Corpus (http://www.glossing.org/glosscorpus), currently containing around 32,000 glosses and still expanding.
Glosses are often not unique, and different manuscripts containing the same primary texts often contain glosses in the same locations with the same or similar wording. However, this material presents serious challenges for Humanities researchers, since 1) a manuscript may contain potentially thousands of glosses, making traditional analysis extremely slow and complex; 2) the textual relationships between different glossed manuscripts are often very complex and not easy to summarise.
The researcher will explore cutting-edge Data Science methods to address these challenges. They will be supported by the project team, who will supply textual content and advise on its interpretation. The researcher will develop new techniques for interpreting historical cultural texts, including texts in under-resourced languages (Old Irish in particular).
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Researchers at University of Galway are encouraged to avail of a range of training and development opportunities designed to support their personal career development plans. University of Galway provides continuing professional development supports for all researchers seeking to build their own career pathways either within or beyond academia. Researchers are encouraged to engage with our Researcher Development Centre (RDC) upon commencing employment - see HERE for further information.
Download PDF: Full job description