We are seeking to appoint a postdoctoral research fellow with an excellent track record in Knowledge Graphs (KG), collaborative approaches, and/or machine learning. Topics of interest in this area include, but are not limited to, semantic web, ontology engineering, reasoning, multimodality, peer-production systems, machine learning, provenance, and knowledge dynamics and ontology change. The successful candidate will contribute to MuseIT, a collaborative project between King’s College London and 10 other European partners, funded by the European Commission (Horizon Europe) and UKRI. The successful candidate will join the Distributed AI (DAI) group in the Department of Informatics, King’s College London. 

The MuseIT project proposes technologies that facilitate and widen access to cultural assets, and helps preserve and safeguard cultural heritage in an inclusive way. Europe enjoys a rich history and an interwoven yet diverse cultural heritage, that has traditionally been made available through institutions and a large variety of projects.  However, in many such efforts the perceptual modalities of sight and hearing have been at the core, and often have been taken for granted. According to a report by The World Bank “One billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience some form of disability […]. One-fifth of the estimated global total, or between 110 million and 190 million people, experience significant disabilities.” To address this, MuseIT aims to promote Inclusion, Participation, Accessibility and Equal Opportunities for All through the development of a platform for remote immersive co- creative engagement with cultural assets and experiences. The MuseIT project aims to improve: (a) accessibility of cultural assets by developing multisensory representations and alternative expressions (multimodal knowledge graphs through wikifunctions and machine learning) to enable engagement by the public regardless of functional or sensory impairments, (b) engagement with cultural assets and cultural co-creation by a broader public (regardless of variations in abilities and perceptual modalities), (c) methodologies for preservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage with inclusion at its core.

The post holder will work closely with dr. Albert Meroño Peñuela, the co-investigator, prof. Elena Simperl (Department of Informatics) and dr. Barbara McGillivray (Department of Digital Humanities), and with project partners in the consortium. The candidate will play a leading role in developing and testing, with a focus on European cultural heritage: methodologies for multisensory knowledge graphs of cultural assets; techniques for scalable multimodal transformations through wikifunctions and machine learning; managing digital rights through provenance and other trust-related technologies; and evaluating knowledge dynamics and ontology change. The candidate is also expected to participate in the project use cases and in scientific reporting (papers and deliverables). 

This post will be offered on an fixed-term contract for 36 months

This is a full-time post - 100% full time equivalent