Postdoc Position

Project

We offer a 4-year research position (including a 1-year probation period) for a post-doctoral researcher in the project aimed at developing, evaluating and applying innovative methodology of comparing large texts collections. The project is located in one of the world’s most prolific stylometry centers, Kraków, led by professor Maciej Eder.

Our lab, Computational Stylistics Group at the Institute of Polish Language of Polish Academy of Sciences is based in Kraków, Poland, and gathers researchers from various disciplines, from literary studies to linguistics, to computer science and physics. Our lab is a member of the Federation of Stylometry Labs (FoSL), and closely collaborates with the COST Action “Distant Reading”, as well as the Digital Literary Stylistics Special Interest Group (SIG) affiliated with the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations. Located in the heart of Europe, we benefit from fast and cheap connections to most of its cities while enjoying peaceful and inspiring atmosphere of a historical center.

Project website: https://computationalstylistics.github.io/projects/focs/

Offer

The position is funded for 4 years, by the Polish National Science Centre. We offer access to good infrastructure, a comfortable salary with various benefits (including paid holiday, health care and social security).

Apart from the remuneration, the job holder will have access to funding for conferences and research visits, and can benefit from the group’s involvement in various international collaboration programs (e.g. COST Action Distant Reading, funded research visit program with group’s branch at the University of Antwerp) as well as the guidance of the project leader in career building and applying for further funding.

The position is available since October 2019, or earlier if possible.

Candidate profile

We are looking for a candidate who is interested in building text analysis and stylometry solutions for the future. While our requirements are quite flexible, we expect the candidate to have some background in computational text analysis and at least basic programming skills in one of the following languages: R, Python, Matlab, Mathematica, Octave (while this is not a must-have at the beginning, we expect you to know the principles of working with text, and to be able to write, test and improve short programs when needed, use version control systems, e.g. git, and understand and apply machine learning algorithms to the studies).

A very good command of spoken and written English is sufficient for communication within and outside the laboratory as Kraków is quite international. We hope to find a candidate able both to conduct research independently and ready to engage in team work. As a formal requirement, at the date of starting job the successful candidate must have obtained a PhD, however not earlier than within the last 7 years.

Main duties and responsibilities

The exact tasks will be determined upon considering interest of the successful candidate but are expected to relate to:

• participating in developing theoretical foundations of computational stylistics; specifically, contributing to one of the subprojects as described at the project’s website: in the first year you will be expected to select a subproject and create a plan of it, to obtain and publish first results in the second year,
• contributing to empirical evaluation of existing and newly created stylometric methods on corpora in various languages,
• publishing within the topic both on their own and with the group,
• participating in doctoral seminars – advising and co-supervising future doctoral student(s),
• engaging in the popularization of methods by participating in workshops and international initiatives.

How to apply

Candidates are encouraged to contact prof. Maciej Eder via personal (maciej.eder@ijp.pan.pl) and institution email (ijp@ijp.pan.pl) with:

• a CV (including publication list),
• a short description of your past research and your interest in the project,
• contact details of two referees (e-mail address and phone numbers, please don’t send recommendation letters at this point),
• scan of a signed copy of the information on the processing of personal data in the recruitment process.

The deadline for applications is 30th April 2019, selected candidates will then be contacted for a Skype interview in May. We expect to close recruitation process by the end of May.

In case of any questions please contact us via CSG email (csg@stylometry.org).

The results are available at the website of our Institute, here.