PhD at Paris-Panthéon-Sorbonne

The Computer Science Department of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers[1][1] (CNAM Paris) and the Department of History of the University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne[2][2] are looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate to work on Modeling and Implementing Prosopographical Databases.

Prosopography is a domain of digital humanities related to the inquiry into the common characteristics of a group of historical actors by means of a collective study of their lives. It relies generally on a database containing information related to persons from a specific milieu defined chronologically and geographically. Its purpose is to collect and analyze data describing the individual lives of the historical actors under consideration, targeting mainly their common characteristics. Historians generally study large groups of individuals mostly poorly documented. Prosopography deals with information which is often incomplete, imprecise, and contradictory. Therefore, there is a need to develop data models accommodating all types of uncertainty.

The research will focus on developing a conceptual approach to designing a prosopographical database encompassing uncertainty. and time dimensions. It comprises five steps: i) a generic prosopographical conceptual model; ii) several meta-models with a mapping between them; iii) a prosopographical ontology; iv) a prototype customized to relational and graph data models and databases; v) a validation and experiments including scalability and quality assessment.

 This PhD position is a part of the DAPHNE Project, funded by the ANR French National Grant Program[3][3]. The position is fully funded and is available for 3 years. The starting date is as soon as possible. The PhD student will be located at CNAM, in Paris Center.

Requirements:

-          A master degree (or equivalent) in Computer Science or Information Systems.

-          Excellent modelling and programming skills.

-          Ability to understand algorithms and frameworks.

-          Ability to design and implement software prototypes.

-          Proficiency in English communication and writing. 

Application:

-          Motivation letter with information on your background and interests.

-          Full curriculum vitae, and if possible a list of all master courses and marks.

-          Contact information for two academic referees.

Contact:
Please send the above information to: Cedric du Mouza, email: cedric.du_mouza@cnam.fr
For any further information please contact: Cedric du Mouza, email: cedric.du_mouza@cnam.fr