In July, the Indiana Philosophy Ontology (InPhO) Project was awarded a new NEH-DFG Bi-lateral Digital Humanities Program grant with the University of Mannheim for linking and populating digital humanities databases. Our current grant ends in December, so this brought tons of relief, injecting $172,215 into the project. The DFG’s contribution of €126,400 allows InPhO co-founder Mathias Niepert to return to the project, along with his team at the University of Mannheim. All in all, the project will be able to continue for another two years.

As a result of the grant, I was offered a full-time, salaried faculty position as a Visiting Research Associate with the IU Cognitive Science Program, continuing work on the InPhO Project. During this time, I will be working on new methods of knowledge representation and machine learning with applications in document classification, ontology evaluation, and taxonomy alignment, bringing the digital humanities into the Linked Open Data initiative. I’ll also be working on a new bibliography management system for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, using a tool developed for Cognitive Science Program faculty publication records.

I started the new position on August 16th. The new full-time job, plus the move to a my own 1-bedroom apartment, along with joining the band, have me falling more and more in love with Bloomington. For the first time in a long, long time, I’m satisfied with where I am. Looking forward to this new chapter of post-college life.