PhD student in digital humanities (4 years, 75%)
Join to apply for the PhD student in digital humanities (4 years, 75%) role at Kanton Bern
The Bit Philology project at the Digital Humanities unit, University of Bern, is offering a fully funded PhD position in digital humanities. Starting from September 2025, the position is for four years and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
The project studies born-digital materials in literary archives, focusing on Swiss collections in French and Italian. It aims to develop cataloguing methods, create prototypes for scholarly editions, explore authors' creative processes, and train future researchers in textual scholarship and digital humanities.
The general goal is to improve discoverability of born-digital sources through detailed archival descriptions. The PhD will define a conceptual model for describing these materials and apply it to case studies, supervised by Prof. Elena Spadini.
Tasks
* Work on your dissertation and participate in project activities, including:
* Collaborating with the team
* Working in archives
* Using OWL ontologies
* Creating RDF datasets
* Publishing and presenting your work locally and internationally
* Contributing to scholarly events and communication strategies
Participation in teaching is optional.
Requirements
* Master's degree in digital humanities, library and information science, textual criticism, or literary studies, completed by July 2025
* Experience or strong interest in:
* Born-digital archival records
* Semantic Web technologies
* Data mining and machine learning
Other qualities include motivation to work independently and in interdisciplinary teams, self-discipline, creative thinking, and proficiency in English and French.
We offer
* A dynamic research environment at the Digital Humanities unit
* Flexible work schedules for work-life balance
* Training opportunities in related fields
* An interdisciplinary doctoral program
* Salary according to SNSF regulations (monthly gross of 3'755 x 13 in 2025)
Contact: Elena Spadini (elena.spadini@unibe.ch)
To apply, send your documents in one PDF named as yourSurname_BitPhil_PhD-A.pdf to Digitalhumanities@unibe.ch:
* Academic CV
* Motivation letter
* Writing sample
* Two references
Application deadline: 31 May 2025. Interviews: 23-24 June, 1 and 3 July.
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