Junior Professorship

Inalco, (l’Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, the
National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations) invites
applications for a Junior Professorship in “Artificial Intelligence for
Rare or Under-Resourced Languages.” This is a fixed-term contract (5 years)
with a reduced teaching load, after evaluation leading ultimately to tenure
as a full professor. Applications must be submitted no later than September
2, 2024, 4 p.m. (Paris time, UTC+02:00) with the appointment to begin no
later than December 31, 2024.

RESEARCH

Inalco is a specialized top-level public institution of higher education
and research, recognized for its contribution to the study of the world’s
languages, cultures and societies across a range of humanities and social
sciences disciplines such as linguistics, sociology, economics, geography,
history, international relations, political science, as well as literary
and artistic studies. The Institute’s research and teaching activities
cover a vast range of languages (over 100) and cultural areas, giving it a
singular and internationally recognized academic reputation.

The digitization of resources (languages, texts, documentation, cultural
objects) and their analysis represent a major challenge for Inalco, both in
terms of research implementation (digital humanities, access to primary
data, open-source intelligence, digital fieldwork) and the promotion of
languages and cultures (access to the information society for speakers of
rare and under-resourced languages).

Based within Inalco itself, ERTIM (Texts, Computer Science, Multilingualism
Research Team) is a research team specializing in
Natural Language Processing (NLP), with a focus on multilingual data
processing, multilingual NLP methodologies and language technology
applications. The team uses and creates methods and tools for the analysis
and processing of languages in both written and spoken datasets. Its
collaborative activities focus on Digital Humanities and the description of
specific languages (such as Chinese, Arabic, Vietnamese, Bambara, Burmese,
Quechua and Hindi), as well as IT applications (text mining, text
classification, text annotation, information extraction, etc.).

ERTIM is looking for a highly experienced candidate, specialized in current
NLP methods (Deep Learning, Large Language Models, Speech Processing),
capable of designing and developing research for the analysis and
processing of under-resourced languages. The successful candidate will be
able to demonstrate how their theoretical and applied research experience
will enable them to address complex issues in innovative ways, both in
terms of linguistic modeling (models of under-resourced or insufficiently
resourced languages) and discursive modeling (processing code-switching,
creolization, language variation, language contact, etc.). The Junior Chair
professorship has a prospect of tenure. In this role, the candidate must be
able to conceptualize and supervise the necessary pre- and post-language
modeling tasks (e.g., speech processing and recognition, OCR, automatic
translation).

Through their expertise and associated research projects, the person
recruited will also participate in discussions within the institute on the
use of Artificial Intelligence in teaching and research for languages and
for areal studies based on oriental language sources. More specifically,
they will be involved in the development of a range of teaching tools for
language teachers wishing to integrate the use of AI, and methodological
tools for students and researchers unable to undertake fieldwork in person
due to physical restrictions.

TEACHING

The person recruited will teach undergraduate and postgraduate (1st and 2nd
cycle) courses in Inalco’s NLP training program and, more widely, as part
of general training in Digital Humanities and language data processing
methodology, at Master’s and Doctoral levels. Students of these courses are
distinctive, in that they often come from humanities and social science
backgrounds, and are speakers (or learners) of languages from the Inalco
sphere of reference (Asia, Africa, the Americas, Oceania, Eastern Europe).
Courses will be chosen in consultation with the teaching team and according
to the skills of the person recruited. They may be generic (algorithms,
programming, etc.), methodological (processing and contextualization of
data from digital fieldwork) or specific to the candidate’s areas of
expertise. The creation of new courses may also be envisaged, in line with
the teaching and learning objectives of existing programs.

The Inalco NLP Master’s is co-accredited with Sorbonne Nouvelle University
and Paris Nanterre University. The degree comprises separate research and
professional streams, leading to careers in data science, NLP development,
computational linguistics, etc.

The teaching load will be 64 hours in the first year, 96 hours in the
second and third years, and 128 hours in the fourth and fifth years
(considered “equivalent TD”, French academic standard tutorials/seminars).
At the end of the contractual period, if hired as a full professor, the
statutory teaching load will be 192 hours.

INALCO

Candidates should hold a PhD and have a well-established research record
showing research activity in areas relevant to the job description (see
below), such as publications in leading international journals, academic
involvement in research projects, etc.
The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate proficiency in one of
the languages of their area of specialization, as well as the ability to
teach in English.

Fluency in French is not required at the time of recruitment, but the
candidate is expected to have acquired a sufficient level of competence by
the end of the contract, i.e. at the time of tenure.

Candidates will be evaluated by a recruitment committee comprising internal
and external experts. Only those candidates shortlisted by the committee
will be invited to an interview based on a review of their applications.
Evaluation criteria will focus on the candidate’s excellence, motivation
and supervisory skills; the quality and originality of their proposed
research and teaching activities; their capacity to integrate their
proposals within the research team and to coordinate the Chair’s program
activities, as well as their ability to establish collaborative networks on
an international scale.
Interviews may be conducted in French or English.

Ph. D.

Tagged as: Academia, Computational Linguistics, France, Information Extraction, Natural Language Processing, NLP, Ph. D.