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EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is one of the most dynamic university campuses in Europe and ranks among the top 20 universities worldwide. The EPFL employs more than 6,500 people supporting the three main missions of the institutions: education, research and innovation. The EPFL campus offers an exceptional working environment at the heart of a community of more than 18,500 people, including over 14,000 students and 4,000 researchers from more than 120 different countries.

PhD position in AI and Digital Art History

Mission

The EPFL Digital Humanities Laboratory (DHLAB) is opening a new PhD position at the intersection of AI and Digital Art History, within the framework of a recently funded SNSF project.

The Digital Humanities Laboratory was founded by Professor Frédéric Kaplan in 2012. The lab develops new computational approaches to manage large digital cultural objects (such as large corpora of texts, images, and complex documents), and to execute high-resolution digitization of artifacts, buildings, and cities. It also aims to develop new understandings of digital cultures, such as visual languages, video culture, and linguistic mediations.

 

The successful candidate will investigate the multimodal propagation of motifs in collections of Tarot decks and in related textual and visual corpora. Strong competence in machine vision, in particular with visual transformers and related technologies, is required. Knowledge of art history is considered an important asset.

Accepted candidates from the EDDH doctoral program (Digital Humanities) or and EDIC (Computer and Communication Sciences) are encouraged to contact the laboratory directly. Candidate interested in the position but yet accepted in a doctoral school can also contact the laboratory. 

 

Main duties and responsibilities

  • Research as part of an SNSF project in collaboration with researchers from the University of Lausanne and other partner institutions
  • Teaching assistance within the Digital Humanities Master and Minor programs, or other related courses
  • Participation in the other activities of the laboratory

Profile

  • Education: MSc Digitial Humanities, Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field,

 

  • Technical skills:

- Solid expertise in machine learning, with practical experience in deep learning architectures (transformers, language models)

- Familiarity with collaborative development and code/model management platforms (GitHub, Hugging Face, and related tools).

 

  • Mindset:

 - Curious, creative, rigorous, and attentive to detail; motivated by scientific research and cultural heritage applications, with a proactive and problem-solving attitude.

- Strong sense of teamwork, communication, accountability, and production readiness.

- Very good command of written and spoken English. Knowledge of French is an asset.

 

We offer

Informations

The selection process involves multiple stages, and short-listed candidates will be requested to apply to a specific EPFL Doctoral Program to qualify for a PhD at EPFL, i.e. EDDH Program Please check this page for additional information on admission.

Please note that this is a separate application process necessary to be eligible to complete your PhD at EPFL.

Your application should contain:

  • A motivation Letter
  • Your detailed CV
  • Contact information
  • The names and contact information of 3 references willing to write a recommendation letter

 

Application deadline: 08.12.2025

Contract Start Date: 01.02.2026

Activity Rate Min: 100 %

Activity Rate Max: 100 %

Contract Type: Fixed term contract

Duration: 4 years max.

 

For more information, please contact: alicia.foucart@epfl.ch or frederic.kaplan@epfl.ch[










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