About us:

As one of Europe’s leading research universities, LMU Munich (LMU) is committed to the highest international standards of excellence in research and teaching. Building on its more than 500-year-long tradition, LMU covers all areas of knowledge within its 18 Faculties, ranging from the humanities, law, economics, and social sciences to medicine and life sciences, computer science, and the natural sciences.

The Institute for Digital Cultural Heritage Studies (IDCHS) is a unique research and teaching unit within the European higher education landscape, dedicated to advancing transformative research on the ancient world through technology and digital engagement. Its mission is to address 21st-century societal challenges while expanding the frontiers of digital scholarship in Heritage Science and Archaeology.

We invite applications for a Ph.D. student (3-year contract as TVL-E13) to join our team and work on EXCALIBUR , a Horizon Europe-funded project focused on applying advanced AI technologies in the cultural heritage (CH) domain. EXCALIBUR utilizes the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) infrastructure to develop innovative tools and methods for creating digital twins (DTs) of cultural heritage objects from burial excavations and related documentation. These DTs enhance the study, conservation, and restoration of cultural heritage context held in European collections or museums. By bridging gaps in research, practice, and stakeholder engagement, EXCALIBUR transforms how bioarchaeological findings are studied and shared, connecting them with artefacts, sites, and burial traditions to deepen understanding of past populations and support the ECCCH’s vision.

Job Description:

The Ph.D. student will support our team’s core contributions to the EXCALIBUR project while also participating in interdisciplinary research at the IDCHS .

The Ph.D. student will contribute to the development of ontologies, knowledge graphs, and AI-driven enrichment tools. A key goal of this research is to explore how large language models (LLMs) can assist in the automatic generation and semantic annotation of cultural heritage data, bridging the gap between raw digital data and meaningful, machine-interpretable cultural narratives.

Key Responsibilities

• Model and represent archaeological knowledge, especially related to burials and ritual practices, using Linked Open Data principles, semantic ontologies, and knowledge graphs.
• Develop or refine domain ontologies using existing standards (e.g., CIDOC CRM, CRMarchaeo).
• Collaborate on the creation and population of knowledge graphs describing funerary material, associated objects, and contextual metadata.
• Design semi-automated or fully automated workflows that use LLMs and AI techniques to support metadata generation, enrichment, and cross-modal linking.
• Work closely with Co-Investigator Nicola Lercari, two postdoctoral researchers at the LMU IDCHS, and the wider EXCALIBUR consortium, comprising fourteen partners across six EU countries.
• Present research at conferences and contribute to academic publications.
• No teaching obligations are expected for the first two years; teaching may be arranged in the third year, depending on interest and institutional needs.

Computer science » Informatics

Research Field

History » Archaeology

Education Level

Master Degree or equivalent

Languages

ENGLISH

Level

Good

Research Field

Computer science » Modelling toolsHistory » ArchaeologyMathematics » Statistics

Years of Research Experience

1 - 4

Number of offers available

1

Company/Institute

LMU Munich/Institute for Digital Cultural Heritage Studies

Country

Germany

State/Province

Bavaria

City

Munich

Postal Code

80799

Street

Akademiestrasse 7

Geofield