Missions

The postdoctoral researcher will research the place and role of images in the circulation of scientific knowledge in the Middle Ages (Byzantium and the West) and in the pre-modern period. In this context, he or she will actively participate in - commenting on the results obtained by learning methods in the project's test corpus; - historically analyzing the results obtained by the same methods; - organizing the monthly international seminar Studies of the scientific illustration circulation processes (Middle Ages - modern times); - the animation and coordination of the Byzantine World team.

Activités

He or she must reside in Paris or in the greater Paris area.
He/she will be provided with a workplace in the premises of the Orient & Mediterranean Laboratory (Team Byzantine World).
Occasional trips to the provinces and abroad are to be expected.

Compétences

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: PhD in history, history of art or history of science from medieval to modern times. A strong interest in Digital Humanities is highly appreciated.

SKILLS REQUIRED: Very good knowledge of written and spoken French and English.

Contexte de travail

As part of the VHS research program (Artificial Vision and Historical Analysis of the Circulation of Scientific Illustrations) (https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-21-CE38-0008) the Orient & Mediterranean Laboratory (Team Byzantine World) recruit.
VHS proposes a new approach to the historical study of the circulation of scientific knowledge, based on new methods of illustration analysis. The aim is to design a new analysis tool based on the study of the evolution and transformation of images in illustrated scientific corpuses from medieval and modern times thanks to the latest developments in AI and computer vision.
The three teams involved in the project (the Digital Humanities team from the Institut des Sciences du Calcul et des Donnes of the Sorbonne University; the Byzantine World team from the Orient & Mditerrane Laboratory, UMR 8167; the Imagine team from the Laboratoire d'Informatique Gaspard Monge from the cole des Ponts ParisTech, ENPC) work together to develop and test unsupervised or weakly supervised learning methods for automatic searches based on the detection of iconographic similarities (between images, in particular, to detect copying and borrowing processes) and text similarities (between images and captions or associated text, for example, to identify different images that describe similar textual content).
These methods should provide historians with new associations of illustrations and possible relationships, the analysis of which will allow assessing the relevance of these methods and their ability to contribute to the study of the modalities of dissemination of illustrated scientific knowledge. The postdoctoral researcher will conduct original research on the place and role of medieval (Byzantium and the West) and pre-modern scientific illustration. He or she will be involved as a historian in commenting and analyzing the results and in the scientific animation of the project.

Contraintes et risques

None

Informations complémentaires

Applications should contain

- a detailed curriculum vitae with a list of publications
- a research project that corresponds to the job profile
- a letter of motivation
- the report of the final jury and the summary of the thesis
- the last two published articles


Letters of recommendation are greatly appreciated.