PhD Day

6 Décembre 2025

Emma Depledge

Prof. Emma Depledge, UNINE

Matthew Wilkens, Professor of Information Science at Cornell University

Dr. Honor Jackson (UNIFR)

This PhD Day intends to cover aspects of the PhD and of the Academic world that the students need help with and want to know more about. It will help them develop new skills that they will need in their academic life. Students will be given the chance to present their work and issues they might have encountered and will be able to discuss then with the invited speakers and the other students present at the workshop.

This year's PhD Day features a keynote lecture by Matthew Wilkens, Professor of Information Science at Cornell University and a leading specialist in quantitative and computational approaches to literary and cultural history. His talk will introduce participants to the ways in which AI is enabling innovative, large-scale research in the humanities. In addition, Stefanie Heeg, a doctoral researcher at Basel University, will present the mapping software she is employing in her dissertation, and Mattia Ferraro, a doctoral candidate at Neuchâtel University, will do the same with topic modelling, thereby offering practical glimpses into digital tools currently reshaping humanities scholarship. A seminar session, led by Prof. Wilkens, will follow, giving students space to discuss how digital humanities methods might be incorporated into their own doctoral projects. In the afternoon, Dr Honor Jackson of the University of Fribourg will lead two sessions. The first will focus on project planning – whether for the PhD itself or for external funding applications – and the second will centre on time-saving tools, introducing useful software, techniques, and productivity strategies. As always, the day will open with a relaxed breakfast, include lunch, and conclude with an apéro, thus providing plenty of informal opportunities for PhD students to meet, exchange ideas, and reconnect.

UNINE

14