Postdoctoral Opportunity in Digital Humanities & Old Norse

I am pleased to share with you a new employment opportunity in the field of digital humanities, with a particular focus on computational philology and Old Norse studies, as part of my current project ‘Digital Approaches to the Survival and Loss of Old Norse Romances’ (https://www.chartes.psl.eu/en/research/centre-jean-mabillon/research-projects/digital-approaches-survival-and-loss-old-norse-romances) based at the École nationale des chartes – PSL in Paris, France and funded by the French National Agency for Research (ANR-23-CPJ1-0118-01).

We are currently recruiting a full-time postdoctoral researcher for a fixed-term, two-year position, with a flexible start date between 1 October 2025 and 1 April 2026.

Please feel free to share the call for applications with your recently graduated or soon-to-graduate PhD students. They are welcome to contact me directly with any questions regarding the definition of their potential postdoctoral project and/or the application process.

Applications should be submitted via email to katarzyna.kapitan@chartes.psl.eu  and recrutement@chartes.psl.eu no later than 19 June 2025, 23:59 (Paris time).

For the PDF-version of the call see: https://github.com/KAKDH/varia/blob/main/PostDoc_DH_Paris_compr.pdf or read the OCR-ed version below.

POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP IN DIGITAL HUMANITIES

Start date: Flexible (between 1 October 2025 and 1 April 2026)

Duration: Fixed-term, full-time position for 24 months

Application deadline: 19 June 2025, 23:59 (Paris time)

Work Languages: English

Salary: 2950 Euros Gross Salary

PROFESSIONAL ENVIRONMENT

The Ecole nationale des chartes - PSL (ENC-PSL) is a leading teaching and research institution in the study of the written culture (including philology, history and social sciences). In addition to its core diploma programme "Archiviste paleographe", the ENC-PSL also offers three Master's programmes, "Digital Technologies Applied to History", "Transnational History" and "Digital Humanities". The ENC is a member of PSL University and Campus Condorcet, and, within the GLAM framework of the Espace Richelieu, it maintains close

ties with the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art.

PSL University provides support for international researchers through its Welcome Desk, which offer guidance regarding the administrative procedures and other aspects of settling in France. Read about the Welcome Desk here: https://psl.eu/en/lifepsl/student-services/psl-welcome-desk

Additionally, PSL University offers French language courses to its employees, helping them integrate more easily into both professional and daily life. Paris offers a vibrant cultural experience, excellent public services, and a dynamic academic environment making it an inspiring place to live and work.

PLACE WITHIN THE INSTITUTION

The recruited postdoctoral fellow will work for two years on the project "Digital Approaches to the Survival and Loss of Old Norse Romances". This project examines the survival and loss of Old Norse romances, broadly understood as medieval chivalric and heroic literature, including works classified as chivalric sagas (riddarasögur) and legendary sagas (fornaldarsögur), along with related narrative poems (rímur). Its goal is to leverage recent

developments in digital humanities to uncover which features of medieval texts

and their manuscripts may have contributed to the survival of certain works and

the loss of others. The project is led by Dr Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, Junior Professor in

"Computational Analysis of Written Culture in Western Space" at the ENC-PSL, and author of Lost but Not Forgotten: The Saga of Hr6mundur and Its Manuscript Transmission (Oxford 2024) as well as co-author of "Forgotten Books: The Application of Unseen Species Models to the Survival of Culture" (2022).

ROLE DESCRIPTION

For this open position, we welcome proposals that apply computational methods

to Old Norse manuscripts and texts. We are particularly interested in research related to one or more of the following topics:

• Computational approaches to the transmission history of Old Norse literature (medieval and early modern), including applying methods such as unseen species modelling, Bayesian modelling, computer-assisted stemmatology, etc.

• Scribal networks in medieval and early modern Scandinavia, for example, network analysis of the production and circulation of books preserving Old Norse romances.

• Computational palaeography and computer-assisted dating of Old Norse manuscripts preserving romances, including the development of ATR (Automatic Text Recognition) models for this corpus.

ACTIVITIES

The postholder will contribute to the research activities relevant to the projects of the Junior Chair in "Computational Analysis of Written Culture in Western Space" and engage in producing original collaborative research. Depending on their profile, responsibilities may include co-authoring academic publications, co-organising academic events, identifying extant versions of relevant texts, preparing manuscript descriptions, conducting literature reviews, performing data entry tasks, creating training data, developing computational analysis programmes, and training computer models.

ESSENTIAL SELECTION CRITERIA:

• PhD in a relevant field (e.g. Digital Humanities, Medieval Studies, Scandinavian Studies, History, Literature, or a related discipline).

• Experience or demonstrable interest in programming, text encoding, and digital methods in historical disciplines.

• Demonstrable excellent oral and written communication skills in English.

• Demonstrable excellent time and project management skills.

DESIRABLE SELECTION CRITERIA:

• Experience or training in working with pre-modern texts and manuscripts.

• Working knowledge of Old Norse-Icelandic.

• Track record of academic collaboration.

• Track record of international mobility.

• Working knowledge of modern Scandinavian languages.

• Communicative knowledge of French.

APPLICATION PROCESS:

Applications should be sent by e-mail to recrutement@chartes.psl.eu and

katarzyna.kapitan@chartes.psl.eu by 19 June 2025, 23:59 (Paris, France).

The application must be written in English and include the following

documents:

• Academic CV (max. 4 pages).

• Motivation letter (max. 500 words) explicitly addressing the selection criteria.

• Research project description (1000-1500 words, excluding references), detailing your individual research programme during the fellowship (what, how, and why) and outlining its relevance for the CPJ project "Digital Approaches to the Survival and Loss of Old Norse Romances".

• Copy of your PhD diploma, or a statement from your supervisor confirming the planned date of degree completion.

• Two samples of academic writing in English (3000-5000 words each). These may be published or unpublished works, such as a chapter from your PhD thesis.

  
  

Applications are particularly welcome from women, queer and genderqueer individuals, people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities, and others under-represented in research positions at ENC-PSL.

Only shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview. No feedback will be

provided to applicants who are not selected for an interview.