Martijn Naaijer: New postdoc unites the Dead Sea Scrolls with Machine Learning
In October, Martijn Naaijer from the Netherlands started as new postdoc in the Biblical Studies Section in cooperation with Associate Professor Martin Ehrensvärd.
Martijn Naaijer's postdoc project is a collaboration between the Faculty of Theology and the Department of Computer Science, where the language and text in the Dead Sea Scrolls are to be analyzed using Machine Learning.
Machine Learning, in short, is a form of artificial intelligence that uses algorithms to recognize patterns and find correlations in large amounts of data. The machines have become so good at analyzing language that in some ways they significantly surpass human capabilities. The project aims to integrate language history and textual criticism, two areas that each have their own specialists and could benefit from the new, powerful methods.
Martijn has previously studied molecular life sciences at Wageningen University and Theology at Radboud University in Nijmegen. He defended his PhD thesis in December 2020. In the PhD project, he investigated variation in Biblical Hebrew syntax using various statistical and machine learning techniques.