About the Project:
Petrarch in Global Translation: A Genealogy of Western Love (PGT) is a collaborative humanities project across languages and national borders that is investigating the foundational conception of Western love as codified by Francesco Petrarch’s Canzoniere. PGT is funded by the NOMIS Foundation: https://nomisfoundation.ch/projects/petrarch-in-global-translation-a-genealogy-of-western-love/
The project, which began in spring 2024 and is projected to run until spring 2028, explores the extent to which Petrarchan norms are useful and adaptive models both within and outside of the Western tradition from which they arose. By re-engaging the practice of Petrarchism, which has spawned centuries of literary production and critical reception, PGT proposes a simultaneously theoretical and experimental, historical and systematic approach to identifying the dominant poetics of love. One of the project’s outcomes will be a website featuring translations of Petrarch’s sonnets along with relevant scholarship, artwork, audio recordings, and data visualizations that will enable users to explore the Canzoniere’s diverse and dynamic transcultural legacies. We are looking for a postdoctoral Fellow with digital humanities experience who will work alongside our team of scholars and web designers to help us realize this goal.
About the Role:
This is a two-year position beginning in September 2025 that will be based either at Brandeis University in Massachusetts or University of Vienna, Austria (depending on the candidate’s visa and citizenship status).
The ideal candidate should have:
- A degree or strong expertise in the field of digital humanities or computational linguistics/data visualization with experience in digital editions of textual corpora
- Fluent/very advanced Italian and English language skills
- Demonstrated interest in Italian language, literature, culture or history as one of their areas of research, preferably in (but not limited to) the Medieval/Renaissance period.
There is no teaching associated with the postdoctoral position, but the fellow will be asked to conduct research on the translations we are producing and to work with both the scholars and the website designers to create meaningful data visualizations that will serve to enhance the project’s scholarship. In addition, the fellow will be asked to pursue their own research project that is related to the general topic of PGT. 10% of the postdoctoral fellowship’s time will be dedicated to administrative coordination and programming; the postdoc will also be the principal coordinator for the data-visualization content of the website, working closely with the website designers and the project manager.
Topics, tasks and assignments may include (depending on the candidate’s strengths/interests):
- Quantitative analyses to improve our understanding of Petrarch's global impact and the circulation of the Canzoniere around the world
- Developing digital methods and tools for tracing the reception, reproduction, or "travel" of Petrarchan forms across the globe
- Creating meaningful links between translations and material sources of Petrarchan texts and images
- Designing graphics and interactive tools for the project website
- Intercultural semantic tagging and interlinking of the corpus of Petrarchan translations
- Co-management (along with our web design team) of a searchable and interlinked repository of Petrarchan translations
- Creation of tools for comparative analyses of a set of given translations
Job Requirements
Educational Requirements:
Given the interdisciplinary nature of the work and the variety of university programs that cultivate the requisite digital humanities skillset, the ideal candidate, in addition to advanced Italian and English and a demonstrated interest in Italian/romance studies, will have at least one of the following advanced degrees:
- A PhD in digital humanities; OR
- A PhD in linguistics with a central focus on digital humanities scholarship and computational linguistics; OR
- A PhD in Italian/romance studies with a portfolio demonstrating proficiency in digital humanities, computer science, or computational linguistics; OR
- A PhD in computer science with a demonstrated central focus in computational linguistics and/or digital humanities scholarship.
Required Skills and Experience:
The ideal candidate will have:
- Demonstrable relevant experience through digital humanities publications and/or active involvement in digital textual projects
- Excellent knowledge of Italian and English
- Competence in at least three of the following:
- Node (javascript)
- D3plus
- TEI Guidelines
- Basic textual markup languages
- Computer Aided Textual Markup and Analysis
- MALLET (MAchine Learning for LanguagE Toolkit)
- Gephi
- Edition Visualisation Technology (EVT)
- Voyant
- Word Seer
- Kami, Recogito
- Digital scholarly editing
- Computational lexicography
- Exceptional communication skills and a willingness to work as part of a team
- Basic project management experience
Please include the following in your application:
- Cover letter
- Academic CV with list of publications and doctoral certificate
- Summary of your research interests including a short proposal of the project you intend to pursue in relation to PGT (max. 500 words)
- Names and contact details for two letters of recommendation
Please send your application in a single document/PDF by June 9, 2025 to: [email protected]
