The University of Sofia launched the call for applications for its ReIReS Course on “Digital Resources for Slavonic-Byzantine Studies”, which will be held November 19-21, 2019.

The course is focused on presenting research tools for facilitating and boosting Slavonic-Byzantine Studies. Especially – but not only – PhD students and postdocs are welcome.

The Course seeks to discuss Byzantine and Old-Slavonic Studies within the digital paradigm by making use of text analysis through digital tools. Choosing an extensively discussed field (Byzantine Studies) and a not-so-widely, yet with passionate followers (Old Church Slavonic Studies), Sofia University makes use of an extraordinary heritage of ‘conventional’ research and a currently-developing field to introduce its participants to a multidimensional approach of linguistics in their traditional, historical, and computational forms by following at the same time the epistemological shift and interchange in sub-fields.

For those who do not understand some of the languages of the focus in the NLP tools, assistant students with the necessary language skills will be provided.

Trainers

• Prof. Anna-Maria Totomanova.
• Prof. Ivan Christov.
• Dr. Gergana Ganeva.
• Dr. Maria Totomanova-Paneva.

Application and Fee

The school is open to scholars affiliated to the ReIReS consortium and to max. five persons from outside the consortium. Scholars from outside the consortium will pay a registration fee of € 395.00.

Common Objectives

The school meets ReIReS Common Objectives and Standards

Specific Learning Goals

1. The participant is able to use the Diachronic corpus of the Bulgarian Language and understand its potential for studying the Slavonic-Byzantine cultural continuum.
2. The participant is able to use the digital tools for studying medieval Slavonic texts:
   ● Specialized Old Bulgarian UTF fonts.
   ● Virtual keyboard.
   ● Search engine.
   ● Tagger(s).
   ● Grammatical dictionary.
   ● Historical dictionaries of different type.
   ● Reversed Greek-Old Bulgarian dictionary.
3. The participant has the possibility to work with experts that created the digital resources , thus gaining awareness of their heuristic potential.
4. The participant is aware of the specific features of the digital tools for Old Bulgarian (OCS) and the potentiality of their use in the research activity.
5. During the school, the participant gains skills for working on specific case studies with constant guidance of experts in using the available resources.
6. The participant gains knowledge and experience about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of the digital transformation of cultural objects.
7. The participant is capable to train others in the use of the presented digital resources and tools for Old-Bulgarian (OCS).

Programme

Go here to see the program (subject to any changes).

Application Deadline

November 1, 2019 (extended date). You can apply by filling out the form, indicating your name, affiliation, function and a short motivation. You will be informed within 14 days on receipt of your application.

Apply now