Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cultural Data Analytics

Requirements for the candidate (incl. Professional experience)
• A PhD in a computational or quantitative area, such as computational social science, data science, information visualisation, data journalism, computational linguistics, information science, network science, etc. while demonstrating understanding or meaningful interest in socio-cultural phenomena. Alternatively, a PhD in a cultural research area, such as art history, digital humanities, cultural heritage studies, cultural policy studies, cultural geography, or tourism management, with a strong track record in computation or quantification.
• Demonstrated ability to produce (potentially) high-impact research, ideally making sense of large-scale socio-cultural data, including corpora of visual and audiovisual materials, and/or capturing the structure and dynamics of multidimensional spaces of (cultural) meaning.
• Ideally, extensive experience in the acquisition and processing of large (cultural) datasets, including familiarity with data dumps, APIs, scraping, streaming, knowledge graph queries, and data integration.
• Ideally, advanced programming skills (Python, R, D3, Processing, or similar) and proficiency with libraries for data manipulation and analysis, machine learning skills, etc.
• Candidates should ideally be familiar with, or not afraid to learn, state-of-the-art machine learning usage, such as the use of machine learning models (such as ChatGPT, Bing, StableDiffusion) used to aid their coding classifying data, and creative production.
• Ideally, strong skills in reading and producing scientific figures as found in top-level multidisciplinary journals. Experience in animating dynamic visualisations or designing interactive experiences is a plus.
• Preference will be for candidates who possess multidisciplinary competence and the necessary open-mindedness to bridge cultural and urban policy, cultural management, tourism, wellbeing, environmental sustainability, and economy.
• We are interested in acquiring and harnessing relevant multimodal data, ideally including cultural, economic, environmental, and policy-related aspects.

Successful candidates will join the Culture Living Lab Trenčín, which is funded by the Trenčín City Council, Trenčín City Region, Slovakian Minister of Culture, and European Commission. The selected fellows will complement a highly multidisciplinary research group, currently including 10 scientific board members from USA, Europe and UK, and 2 Postdoctoral Research Fellow (a further 3 more will be recruited). Current expertise includes cultural policy, data science, cultural management, economy, engineering, project management, diversity, equity, and inclusion, tourism, and placemaking.
The position is hosted by the purposed-developed EU-accredited Culture Living Lab Trenčín. The Culture Living Lab Trenčín is committed to the following principles for the monitoring and evaluation of Trenčín 2026 European Capital of Culture 2026:
● Citizen-driven research brings together an Open Research & Innovation Group formed by academics, policymakers, citizens, third sector and culture and creative industries.
● Independent research and critical validation ensured with ethical and international peer-review processes.
● Process-focussed methodology to capture inputs (e.g. cultural programme), processes (e.g. governance mechanisms), and outcomes (e.g. cultural participation).
● Open-source datasets and findings enable further Trenčín 2026 ECoC legacies analysis.
Culture Living Lab Trenčín is the research arm of Trenčín as European Capital of Culture 2026, working in collaboration with high-profile academic partners that are spread across the globe while cooperating with several public and private stakeholders, including libraries, museums, media institutions, and open data providers. Successful candidates will be provided with data-science-grade laptop, the opportunity to attend conferences, and collaborate with international partners. Specifically, the successful candidate will be based in Slovakia and invited as visiting fellows, with paid travelling expenses, at the Tallinn University CUDAN lab (see https://cudan.tlu.ee/team/max/) led by Dr Maximilian Schich, Professor for Cultural Data Analytics and CUDAN ERA Chair holder.

5 sick days per year

Applications should include:
1. CV
2. signed motivation letter,
3. copies of a document certifying qualification (PhD),
4. brief statement of research experience and interests,
5. list of research publications,
6. link to or full text of a representative research publication,
7. two letters of recommendation.
Applications should be submitted in a single PDF file, in English to Anna Bumbálová [email protected], by 20th June 2023.