Fully-funded PhD Fellowship in Predicting Reader Assessment at the Aarhus University, Denmark

The Graduate School at Arts, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University, in collaboration with the Velux Foundation, invites applications for a fully-funded PhD scholarship/fellowship in Predicting reader assessment provided the necessary funding is available. This PhD scholarship is available as of July 1, 2021, for a period of up to four years.

Summary

Project Description

Fabula-NET is an interdisciplinary collaboration between literary research, linguistics, and informatics to improve literary scholarship, specifically academic assessment, through the state of the art “humanist-in-the-loop” machine learning. Literature’s multidimensional and complex texts constitute a particularly challenging material with the potential to develop new deep models for automated text classification.

The project combines fractal analysis, sentiment classification, and advanced language models with deep neural networks to describe the internal coherence of texts based on the hypothesis that a successful literary work exhibits a particular variation between predictability and unpredictability. This variation is mainly reflected in the dynamic properties of the narrative.

The overall model can classify texts as high/low quality and successful/unsuccessful, which is supported by preliminary studies of, for example, H. C. Andersen’s fairy tales and J. K. Rowling’s novels. The project is multilingual and works with a vast corpus in English, Danish, and Chinese in collaboration with several domain experts who help validate the automated analysis results.

The application possibilities for this technology are wide-ranging. It will be relevant for both libraries and publishers for searching through and evaluating texts and in research to understand and compare extensive collections of texts from world literature at a level higher than compiled single analyses. The application can also be developed for other types of texts and contribute to increasing the quality of, e.g., automated text generation.

The successful applicant will describe a PhD project that will focus on how intrinsic (e.g., narrative structure, stylistic features), extrinsic (e.g., reviews), and contextual (e.g., reader preferences) properties of literary works can be used to predict reader assessment in an unbiased and, to the extent it is the possible transparent way. 

Application Deadline

The deadline for applications is March 15, 2021

Eligibility

• Your background could be in literary studies or digital humanities-related disciplines combined with skills in working computationally. 
• Necessary programming skills is a requirement
• Experience with interdisciplinary research environments is an advantage but not a requirement.
• You can work independently as well as in a team.
• You will relocate to Aarhus expect for a 3-6 months stay at another institution.

Enrolment and place of work

• The PhD student must complete the studies following the valid regulations for the PhD degree programme, currently the Ministerial Order of August 27, 2013, on the PhD degree programme at the universities: http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/thephddegreeprogramme/
• Description of the graduate school’s PhD degree programme: http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/phdstudystructure/
• Rules and regulations for the PhD degree programme at the Graduate School at Arts: http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/thephddegreeprogramme/  
• The PhD scholar/fellow will be enrolled as a PhD student at the Graduate School at Arts, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University, to complete a PhD degree at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University.
• The PhD student will be affiliated with the PhD programme Language, Linguistics, Communication, and Cognition.
• The PhD student’s place of work will be the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. In general, the student is expected to be present at the school on an everyday basis.
• The PhD degree programme is expected to include lengthy research stay at a foreign institution, cf—description of the graduate school’s PhD degree programme.
• School of Communication and Culture’s research programme:
  http://cc.au.dk/en/research/research-programmes/

Application Process

• If you require professional guidance regarding your application for the PhD scholarship/fellowship, please contact the PhD programme director at Language, Linguistics, Communication, and Cognition:  http://phd.arts.au.dk/about-us/contact/
• For further information, please contact Professor Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, School of Communication and Culture, madsrt@cc.au.dk, Phone + 45 3114 1419.
• The application must be submitted in English.
• All applicants must document English language qualifications comparable to an ‘English B level’ in the Danish upper secondary school (‘gymnasium’). Please see this page for further information: http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/english-test/  
• Applications for the PhD scholarship/fellowship and enrolment in the PhD degree programme can only be submitted via Aarhus University’s web-based facility.
• Guidelines for the application facility: http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/how-to-apply/

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