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The Saxo Institute, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen (UCPH), invites applications for a postdoctoral position in Digital Humanities with a focus on Natural Language Processing in the ERC Consolidator Project INNER LEAGUE starting January 1, 2026.

The position is a fixed term position for 36 months.

Introduction

INNER LEAGUE is a 5-year ERC Consolidator Project (2025-2030), headed by Dr Haakon A. Ikonomou (PI). INNER_LEAGUE provides a comprehensive social-bureaucratic history of the League of Nations (LN) Secretariat. The project will investigate the inner life of the secretariat to (a) understand how it shaped the professional lives of the ca. 4,000 people who worked there. And (b) how this global workplace shaped the lasting bureaucratic infrastructures of multilateralism it serviced.

To deliver on its undertaking, the project implements an approach combining social, institutional, and digital history across three work packages: (i) Communities, (ii) Hierarchies, and (iii) Infrastructures.

To operationalize its approach, INNER LEAGUE has several concrete objectives:

(1) To systematically uncover and analyze the emergence, endurance, change, and impact of professional, educational, epistemic, social, and emotional communities within the League Secretariat.

(2) To examine the often-contested formation of hierarchies and communities within the League Secretariat via state-of-the-art digital approaches.

(3) To investigate how processes of community building and hierarchization impacted upon the professional lives of the staff of the League Secretariat.

(4) To study and explain how and under what material circumstances these hierarchized communities of officials and staff built, maintained, operated, and passed on new infrastructures of multilateralism.

The project is hosted at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen. The Saxo Institute at the Faculty of Humanities is dedicated to the study of human societies past and present, with degree programs in History, Archeology, Ethnology, Classical Languages, and Migration Studies.

Duties and Responsibilities
We are looking for candidates with a doctoral-level background in computer science, machine learning, natural language processing, computational humanities or social sciences, computational linguistics, or similar fields who are interested in working collaboratively to apply computational methods to the INNER_LEAGUE Project.

The postdoctoral researcher’s primary role will be to develop and implement NLP methodologies that can aid the team in effectively retrieving, processing, analyzing, and interpreting historical documents. The project draws on the fully available, digitized and OCR-scanned archival material of the League of Nations (c. 15.000.000 pages – in French and English).

Experience in working with the history of international organizations, international public administrations and/or multilateral diplomacy in the 20th (and 21st) century is a plus, but not a requirement. Proficiency in reading English and French is a requirement.

The postdoc is required to:

  • Develop and apply NLP methodologies to analyze archival materials such as appointment committee deliberations (about hiring, promoting, or firing staff), certificates of increment (staff evaluations), and letters of complaints/requests (from staff to superiors), which are partly handwritten.
  • Code in JavaScript and develop prosopographical material for a new version of the digital prosopographical research tool VisuaLeague.
  • Collaborate with the INNER_LEAGUE team of historians to allow for experiments with, and ensure the successful integration of, NLP techniques into historical research.
The postdoc will include a secondment/fellowship for a duration of time (to be specified) with the Centre for Digital and Computational Humanities (Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen) and/or with the Centre for Digital Humanities and Multilateralism (Graduate Institute, Geneva).

Qualification requirements and assessment criteria

A PhD in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Computational Humanities (or Social Sciences), or a related field with a focus on NLP.

Demonstrated expertise in key NLP methodologies is a requirement, covering for example:

  • Text preprocessing (tokenization, stemming, lemmatization)
  • OCR (including post-correction)
  • Named Entity Recognition (NER)
  • Part-of-speech (POS) tagging
  • Syntactic and semantic parsing
  • Information retrieval and extraction
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Topic modeling
  • Interpretable and explainable NLP
Proficiency in JavaScript is necessary, together with Python or other programming languages such as R, and experience with NLP libraries and frameworks like NLTK, spaCy, TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar.

Familiarity with historical textual data and willingness to tackle the challenges specific to this domain, such as:

  • Dealing with OCR errors in digitized historical documents
  • Contextualizing historical events and linguistic usage over time
  • Ethically handling racialized and gendered language
A clear advantage is:

  • A strong publication record in NLP and computational linguistics conferences and journals.
  • Familiarity with historical research methodologies and sources.
  • Experience with collaborative, interdisciplinary research environments.
Applicants will be assessed in relation to their research qualifications (as listed above), including their publications, ability to conduct independent research and participate in research collaborations. In addition, the applicant’s research plan and research potential will be assessed in relation to the overall and specific research requirements of INNER LEAGUE described above.

More information on careers at UCPH and the requirements for the different academic positions is available on:
Career at The University of Copenhagen – University of Copenhagen (ku.dk)

For more about postdoc positions and qualification requirements, see the Job Structure for Academic Staff at Universities: Ministerial Order on Job Structure for Academic Staff at Universities (ufm.dk)

Application
Applications must be submitted online in PDF or Word format. Click on the “Apply now” button at the bottom of this advertisement to apply.


Applications should be written in English and must include the following attachments:

  1. Letter of motivation (max. 3 pages)
  2. CV
  3. Documentation of qualifications (exam certificates and PhD diploma)
  4. Proof of coding/NLP expertise: Link to a project repository or portfolio of repositories you have worked on.
  5. Complete publication list (attached publications must be marked with an asterisk). The list must be structured systematically and divided into the following categories:
  • Peer-reviewed publications:
    • Monographs and anthologies
    • Articles in journals
    • Book chapters/anthology contributions, etc.
  • Non-peer-reviewed publications:
    • Publications disseminating research findings, etc.
Applicants can attach a maximum of 3 publications. The publication dates must be clearly marked on the list. The selected publications must be uploaded as attachments and numbered.

  1. Research proposal (3-5 pages relating to the description of the position above)
  2. A brief list of relevant teaching experiences.
Only documentation in English will be assessed.

Applicants are invited to familiarize themselves with the faculty’s strategic landmarks here: Strategic landmarks – University of Copenhagen (ku.dk)

Salary and terms of employment
Terms of appointment and salary will be in accordance with an agreement between the Ministry of Finance and The Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (AC). The salary range starts at DKK 38.700 (EUR 5.190) + a 17,1 % contribution to the pension scheme. It is possible to negotiate salary supplements on an annual basis.

The recruitment process
Once the deadline for applications has expired, the Head of the Saxo Institute will consider advice from the appointment committee and shortlist applicants for assessment. All applicants will be notified whether or not they have been shortlisted. The Head of the Saxo Institute will then set up an expert assessment committee to consider the shortlisted applications. The selected applicants will be informed who is serving on the assessment committee. They will be offered the opportunity to comment on the committee’s assessment of their application before the appointment is announced.

Further information on the recruitment process at University of Copenhagen can be found here: Recruitment process – University of Copenhagen (ku.dk)

An Equal Opportunity Workplace
The University of Copenhagen is committed in its pursuit of academic excellence to equality of opportunity and to creating an inclusive working environment and therefore encourages all qualified candidates to apply, regardless of personal background, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, ethnicity etc. For more on the diverse working place environment at the University and the University’s participation in the HRS4R HR Excellence in Research, see HR Excellence in Research – University of Copenhagen (ku.dk)

International applicant?
The University of Copenhagen offers a broad variety of services for international researchers and accompanying families, including support before and during your relocation and career counselling to expat partners. Please find more information about these services as well as information on entering and working in Denmark here: For international researchers at the University of Copenhagen – University of Copenhagen (ku.dk)

Contact information
Information about the recruitment process is available from HR email:

HR-soendre@adm.ku.dk, please refer to ID number: 211-2185/25-2I

Additional information about the position can be obtained from Dr Haakon A. Ikonomou, email: ikonomou@hum.ku.dk, phone +4530238132

The deadline for applications is 23:59 on 1 August 2025 CET.

Any applications or additional material submitted after the deadline will not be considered.

Please note in your application that you found the job at Jobindex

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