Second Call for Applications for ITSERR TNA fellowships 2024-2025

ITSERR launches its second call for applications for the Transnational Access (TNA) programme!

Foreign scholars (European and non-European) and PhD students – individuals or teams – within the fieldwork of Religious Studies or within the fieldwork of IT for DH can apply for a funded research fellowship to visit the special libraries, collections, archives and IT laboratories of the ITSERR TNA network of hosts.

ABOUT

ITSERR is the Italian research project aimed at enhancing the ESFRI RESILIENCE Research Infrastructure, whose high interdisciplinarity is finalized to meet the evolving needs of the Religious Studies scientific community by enriching the diversity, the quality and innovation of the knowledge in this specific domain. The project is developed thanks to the collaboration between humanists (experts on History, Philology and Christian, Islamic and Jewish Studies, but also archaeologists working on topics and sites related to the domain of Religious Studies) and IT engineers.

The main goal of the project it related to its high interdisciplinarity as it is offering to the Religious Studies the possibility to create new specific tools for the enhancing of the domain, but also the way to applicate to it others already existing and really suiting for its purposes and objectives.

ITSERR is a consortium of 5 partners across Italy:

Institute of Information Science and Technologies “Alessandro Faedo” (ISTI-CNR) in Pisa, affiliated to the National Research Council (CNR),
Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia (UniMORE),
Università di Napoli “l’Orientale” (UniOr),
Università degli Studi di Palermo (UniPa),
Università di Torino (UniTo).

All of them are contributing to the progress of the Religious Studies as the project is willing to play a pivotal role in enriching the diversity, the quality and innovation of knowledge produced by the community of the Religious Studies. becaming the driver of a new match with the new assets of AI/BD/HPC.

The Institutes and Departments of ITSERR consortium are involved in the advancement of Religious Studies according to their own features and specificities:

IT Institutes and Departments, such as ISTI -CNR, the Department of Engineering “Enzo Ferrari” at UniMORE or the Mathematics and Computer Science and the ones of Engineering and Architecture at UniPa, are leaders in bringing innovation within the domain.

Departments highly involved in Religious Studies participate through the excellence of their didactic and research, such as the Department of Education and Humanities (DESU) at UniMORE or the Departments of Cultures and Societies and Law at UniPa.

Department of Historical Studies at UniTo and Department of Asia, Africa and Mediterranean (DAAM) at UniOr are developing new methodologies within the Religious Studies and Archaeology.

Within the consortium each partner participates with some specific Institutes and Departments to the development of the activities of the WPs of the projects. To discover more about each WP see our website and the following table:

ITSERR WP	Main topics	Outcomes
WP3-T-Res	Creation of critical editions of primary sources and a categorization of printed religious normative sources	Development of two open-source softwares (CRITERION and GNORM) for the creation of critical editions and the automatic analysis and categorization of printed religious normative sources through data mining techniques and 3D visualization.
WP4-DamSym	Translations of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as a case study	Development of softwares and algorithms for texts to improve understanding techniques to the investigation of semantic textual issues, using the translations of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as a case study
WP5-Digital Maktaba	Cultural heritage data in non Latin Languages	Creation of a digital cataloguing system for libraries specialized in religious studies that need to manage cultural heritage data in non-Latin alphabets, starting with the Arabic alphabet.
WP6-YASMINE	Two case studies: “Sanctuaria,” which focuses on shrines and their connections, and “Plorabunt,” a database of individuals killed in places of worship since 1982	A tool – called YASMINE – using artificial intelligence to extract and analyze data and knowledge from various sources, including the web for use in religious studies research.
WP7-REVER	Archival documents connected to Regesta (scholarly summaries) and translations of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as a case study ecclesiastical sources.	Development of an expert-augmented machine learning algorithms that can reconnect archival documents to their regesta.
WP8-UbiQuity	References to the Bible and the Qur’an in ancient commentaries	Development of a machine learning search engine for identifying references to the Bible and the Qur’an in ancient commentaries and designed to search through two large corpora: Christian and Islamic commentaries
WP9 -TAURUS	Creation of a dataset based on the collection of cuneiform tablets with religious content from the Eastern Collections of the Royal Museums of Turin, one of the most compete and ancient of Italy.	Development of a software toolkit for 3D visualisation and fruition of historical heritage artefacts and materials; the toolkit is intended for specialised researchers in the field of Religious Studies and Archaeology, transversally applicable to other domains.
WP10 – ReTINA	Religious and magical texts on different supports from the Nile Valley	Review the state of the art in the field of study by analyzing digital archives containing religious texts from different times, regions, languages, and media. Development of common guidelines for digitization and digital archiving by optimizing existing data models. A software prototype to note down and visualize the text.

ITSERR TNA PROGRAM

Through its Transnational Access Programme ITSERR offers support and expertise for research stays at leading Italian Universities and research centres holding relevant collections within libraries and archives for Religious Studies together with outstanding IT laboratories for the increasing of the development of Digital Humanities.

TNA users can visit institutions in a country other than the one in which they work. TNA users will have free access to the collections, as well as tailored support from the institution, and assistance from local experience scholars relevant to the user’s research. A TNA visit thus means faster access to resources, and therefore more effective use of research time.

European and non-European scholars and PhD students are invited to apply for a funded research fellowship to visit the special libraries, collections, archives and IT laboratories of ITSERR TNA hosts.

The call will be open from December 10th 2024 to January 25th 2025.

HOSTS

ITSERR TNA hosts are the 5 members of the consortium. All these centres and libraries grant access to their collections , documents and rare books as well as to their virtual sources and to excellence IT laboratories.

You will read more specific information on the TNA host by following the links below.

HOW ITSERR TNA WORKS?

ITSERR TNA funded programme foresees ingoing and outgoing mobility.

Foreign scholars (European and non-European) and PhD students – individuals or teams – within the fieldwork of Religious Studies or within the fieldwork of IT for DH, can apply for funded TNA within the nodes of the ITSERR network (incoming mobility).
ITSERR scholars and PhD students from programs of the ITSERR consortium can apply for funded TNA within the framework of the RESILIENCE TNA calls to stay in one of the TNA Hosts of the RESILIENCE RI (outgoing mobility). More detailed information on the next RESILIENCE TNA Call for Applications can be found here: https://www.resilience-ri.eu/cfa-tna/

Funded TNA for research teams are a specific feature of the ITSERR project as it ensure the collaboration and the development of the research leaded by each team. Please note that this opportunity is dedicated exclusively to ingoing mobility within the Italian network of hosts of ITSERR.

Please note that this second call for application is dedicated exclusively to incoming mobility.

ITSERR TNA fellowships are funded by NextGenerationEU – National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza, PNRR) and awarded on a competitive basis, based on specific eligibility criteria (see below).

BENEFITS OF ITSERR TNA

You will benefit from the following services available through the five participating ITSERR institutions:

A research stay of up to two weeks, depending on the kind of research and the instruments to be used;
A research stay up to one month for individual fellows or a team participating in the technical development of the ITSERR project and in the creation of the ITSERR services;
Free and effective access to the physical and virtual collections of the participating ITSERR institutions;
Free and effective access to the IT labs and expertise of the participating ITSERR institutions;
Support from a local expert throughout your stay;
You will be connected to scholars and experts related to your area of expertise;
Full cost coverage of economy flights (booking by ITSERR);
Full cost coverage of accommodation near the institutions (booking by ITSERR);
Full board accomodation (or half board on request) are also available (booking by ITSERR);
You will be involved in research activities organised by each institution, such as conferences, lectures, and seminars.

SELECTION AND ELIGIBLE CRITERIA

To benefit from the support of funded ITSERR TNA, applicants are requested to submit proposals that will be evaluated by the Peer Review Committee based on the following selection criteria:

Quality of the research conducted by the applicant;
Scientific merit of the proposed project;
Feasibility of the proposed project;
Personal statement.

Proposals for accessing our programme are eligible if they meet the following criteria:

Transnationality: to promote transnational research the TNA fellows have to be affiliated to Institutions from countries other than that of the TNA site;
All TNA fellows must ensure open access to publications arising from their stay during TNA;
Balance of the heterogeneity of the applicants according to age, gender, provenance, research/professional status;
Team applications: the interdisciplinarity and heterogeneity of the composition of the team members will be encouraged.

Please note that an important added value for the elegibility of the proposal is the relationship with the main topics of the research developed by our Wps (see our website), whose topics and outcomes are described in the table of contents above.

To apply for funded ITSERR TNA is necessary to follow the procedure described at the bottom of this web page.

Please note that: You will need an ORCID number. If you don’t already have one, please go to orcid.org to obtain your own in a few clicks.

PUBLICATIONS

ITSERR TNA fellows should aim to publish the results of their researches within a clear timeline and preferably in open access ISI or SCOPUS refereed journals that have substantial academic impact. Moreover, the support of the EU and of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNNR) as well the use of ITSERR services must be clearly acknowledged in the academic publications.

WHO CAN APPLY?

European and non-European scholars and PhD students whose research is leaded within the fieldwork of Religious Studies which integrate the use of digital resources or within the IT fieldwork, especially for the development of softwares and tools for Digital Humanities, can apply for a fellowship regardless of their academic status.

APPLICATIONS

The application process of the second call for proposals will be closed the next January 25th 2025.

Please note all applications will be processed after January 27th 2025.

SAVE THE DATE: ITSERR TNA program foresees to launch its last call for proposals during 2025, opening on June 10^th, 2025!

HOW TO APPLY

All the documents (application form and 2 pages CV – European pass template – all 1 PDF file) to be submitted to tna@itserr.it

To apply for our calls proposals, please download the application form:

ITSERR_TNA-application-form-2024-with-template-Download

QUESTIONS

For general questions about the application procedure and Transnational Access (TNA), please contact the ITSERR TNA team tna@itserr.it