Call for applications - Villa Guimet

Call for applications for a sponsored research position on early photography in Japan at the Villa Guimet

12-month contract, starting December 1, 2026

Sector
Museums

Presentation of the company/the institution

The Etablissement public du musée des arts asiatiques – Guimet (hereinafter referred to as the Guimet Museum) is a French national public institution of an administrative nature (EPCA). The Guimet Museum houses one of the largest collections of Asian art in Europe and one of the most important in the world, with over 60,000 works, 100,000 books and 600,000 photographs. Its geographical scope spans from Afghanistan to Japan. The museum is spread across four sites: the historic 1889 building on Place d’Iéna, Maison Guimet on Avenue d’Iéna (Hôtel Heidelbach incorporated into the museum in 1991), the Musée d’Ennery on Avenue Foch, and off-site storage facilities in Morangis (91).

With 166 staff members, the Guimet Museum includes diverse roles and skills: curators, registrars, exhibition managers, reception and security staff, and many others contribute to the museum’s activities and events. Its annual budget averages €20 million.

Created in December 2024, the Villa Guimet – International Research Centre for Asian Arts – brings together several departments: the library, which holds over 100,000 books and 3,000 periodical titles; the archives (approximately 1,000 linear metres) ; the documentary resources and the collections database; and a photographic archive comprising approximately 600,000 photographs. The research centre comprises five departments: Library, Archives, Documentation, Photography, and Research. Its priority missions are:

  • to preserve, study, and promote the combined holdings of the library, archives, and photographs;
  • to develop research at the international level by hosting scholars and through innovative research and creative programs;
  • to promote and disseminate the results of this research through a program of conferences, seminars, cultural activities, and artistic creations.

The Villa Guimet implements the museum’s research policy, formalized in a five-year research plan for 2026-2030.

 

Start date
December 1st, 2026

Duration
1 year

Proposed remuneration
Salary based on the candidate’s profile

Place
Paris (75)

Address of recruiter
6, place d'Iéna
75116 Paris

Website of the company/the institution
https://www.guimet.fr/

Additional information
Candidates can send their questions to : edouard.desaintours@guimet.fr

 

Description of the position

The candidate will be recruited as a research fellow at the Villa Guimet – International Research Center for Asian Arts.

This contract aligns with the objectives, timeline, and budget of the HikarIA Project, led by the Guimet Museum in partnership with the French company TEKLIA since October 2023. Partly funded by the Caisse des Dépôts as part of the cultural component of the France 2030 investment plan, the project has three main objectives:

  • To preserve, study, and promote the Guimet Museum’s photographic collections;
  • To develop new digital tools for accessing photographic collections and for art historical research (artificial intelligence, IIIF protocol);
  • To enrich knowledge about photography in Japan during the Bakumatsu, Meiji, and Taisho periods (1853–1926).

 

Centred around the early photographs of Japan held at the Guimet Museum, the HikarIA Project began with the complete restoration of the Dubois collection, which constitutes the majority of the corpus (19,000 phototypes). This was followed in 2025 by the rehousing, cataloguing, and digitization of all the early photographs of Japan at the Guimet (approximately 21,000 photographs and some fifty illustrated books).

Alongside the material processing of these collections, TEKLIA identified artificial intelligence (AI) models capable of improving the digital discoverability of these corpora by automating certain tasks: segmentation, orientation, identification, tagging, description, transcription, geolocation, visual similarity, semantic search, image search, statistical analysis, and translation. Implemented on TEKLIA's Arkindex platform, these models were tested and refined on a comprehensive pre-existing dataset (inventory numbers, low-resolution images, and descriptors produced by researchers). The data produced by these models is periodically exported to a public, trilingual database, the beta version of which is accessible online (https://hikaria.org/). It will be replaced in 2026 by new high-definition images and enriched metadata acquired during the first phase of the project.

The third phase of the HikarIA Project, which began in September 2025, involves associate scholars in improving the developed tools and using them for research purposes. After hosting Saki Toriumi, a photography historian specializing on nineteenth-century Japan, in 2025, and Jules Keenan, a student working on the potential of AI for managing photography collections, the Guimet Museum is recruiting a project manager in 2026 to refine and utilize HikarIA’s digital tools to enrich knowledge about the history of photography in Japan before 1926.

Working closely with the Villa Guimet’s Photography Department and TEKLIA, the successful candidate will be responsible for the following tasks:

 

Contribute to the improvement of the HikarIA platform

  • Test the database with specific search queries to identify recurring errors and biases in the AI ​​models and propose improvements;
  • Clean and harmonize the list of tags (3,400) according to relevant cultural and semantic criteria;
  • Propose new features to improve the website’s usability and the corpus’s discoverability.

 

Conduct research on the Guimet Museum's holdings

  • Develop a specific methodology to implement the platform’s tools and interpret the corpus;
  • Produce in-depth analyses on selected sets within the corpus and the history of photography in Japan in general;
  • Enrich the metadata associated with the photographs (author, date, location, title, materials, technique);
  • Enter the new metadata into the Guimet’s collection management software in conjunction with the documentation department of the Villa Guimet.

 

Contribute to research on the history of photography in Japan before 1926

  • Attribute photographs, enrich the biographies of photographers, studios, painters, and models;
  • Propose analyses on the economic history of these productions, their aesthetic developments and the circulation of photographers, painters, models and photographs;
  • Lead a broader reflection on the dissemination of images, mutual influences between Europe and East Asia, the photographic staging of Japan, the validity of the concept of a "Yokohama School", the emergence of Western stereotypes about Japan or tourism practices at the dawn of globalization.

 

Presentation of findings and promotion of research

  • Write a comprehensive research report;
  • Publish one or more articles in peer-reviewed journals;
  • Coordinate and participate in two international conference, in France and Japan, in 2027;
  • Participate in the Villa Guimet’s lecture series on current research on Asian arts.

 

Reporting authority: Head of the Photography Department at the Villa Guimet.

 

Professional relationships:

Internal: Head of the Villa Guimet, head of collections and curation, other departments (education, legal, and IT departments, communications department, etc.).

External: Institutional partners (Ministry of Culture, French and foreign heritage institutions, etc.), service providers.

 

Desired Profile

  • Degree in the Humanities (history, art history, visual culture, aesthetics) at the Master's, PhD, or postdoctoral level;
  • Proficiency in bibliographic and archival research methodologies, techniques, and tools;
  • Knowledge of the history of photography in Japan, as well as the history of Japan and its relations with the West from the mid-19th century to the end of the Taisho era (1926);
  • Knowledge of contemporary issues in the field of digital humanities;
  • Proficiency in the Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint);
  • Other desired skills: Autonomy, responsiveness, ability to work in a team, as well as analytical, synthetical, organizational and coordination skills;
  • Knowledge of the Japanese language is an asset.

 

Working Conditions

Start date: December 1, 2026

Duration/Workload: full-time fixed-term contract for a period of 12 months, from December 1, 2026 to November 30, 2027.

Place of work: Musée Guimet – Musée national des arts asiatiques, 6, place Iéna, 75116 Paris, France

Salary and benefits:

  • Salary based on the candidate’s profile
  • Access to staff cafeteria
  • Reimbursement of part of public transportation costs, according to regulations

 

Application requirements

Candidate commitments

Candidates agree to participate in the scientific activities of the Guimet Museum for the duration of their contract and, where appropriate, to present their research at seminars, scientific events, and in publications. They agree to submit (in addition to the research report) an activity report, which will be published in the Guimet’s annual report.

Eligibility Criteria :

Applicants must hold a Master’s, a doctoral, or a postdoctoral degree in the humanities.

Applicants must possess a valid identity document (for French citizens or citizens of other European Union countries), or a valid residence permit with authorization to work for the duration of the proposed contract (for citizens of other countries). They must also have a bank account in France (or a SEPA bank account in the European Union) on the date the employment contract is established.

 

Application Submission: The application file must include

  • A cover letter with an outline of the considered methodology
  • A curriculum vitae with a list of publications, symposium presentations and scientific events organized

These documents must be compiled into a single PDF file, respecting the order of the documents indicated above and the following naming convention: LASTNAME_Firstname_HikarIA_2026. Documents in a foreign language must be accompanied by a translation into French or English. The application must be submitted electronically (PDF) only, via email to both Recrutement_vg_2026@guimet.fr et photographies@guimet.fr, requesting a read receipt. Incomplete applications or those not conforming to the above description will not be considered.

The deadline for receiving applications (via email) is September 30, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. (UTC+1). After the application period closes, the applications will be reviewed by a jury, and the results will be announced no later than October 21, 2026.

As part of its commitment to professional equality and diversity, the Guimet Museum is committed to combating all forms of discrimination and encourages all eligible candidates to submit their applications.