# Julia Hintersteiner, MA BA

Digital Humanities · Medieval Studies · Digital Editions · Salzburg / Vienna, Austria

I am a Digital Humanities researcher and software developer. I work on the Middle High German Conceptual Database (MHDBDB) at the University of Salzburg and on the digital edition of Peter Handke's notebooks at the Austrian National Library. My research connects medieval studies, art history and AI-assisted methods: semantic annotation of historical language data, text–image relations in medieval manuscripts and TEI-based research data infrastructures.

## Current positions

- **Senior Scientist**, [Middle High German Conceptual Database (MHDBDB), University of Salzburg](https://mhdbdb.plus.ac.at/)
- **Software Developer, Digital Humanities**, [Research & Data Services, Austrian National Library](https://www.onb.ac.at/)

## Research interests

- Word sense disambiguation and semantic annotation of historical language data
- Digital editions of medieval manuscripts, text–image relations
- AI-assisted indexing of iconographic motifs
- TEI-XML data modelling, data migration and research data infrastructure
- AI-assisted methods in the Digital Humanities and their critical reflection

## Projects

- **Middle High German Conceptual Database (MHDBDB)** (since Nov 2023, Senior Scientist): Research infrastructure for Middle High German language and literature. Migration of the entire data set from RDF to TEI, platform relaunch, open data on GitHub and Zenodo. [mhdbdb.plus.ac.at](https://mhdbdb.plus.ac.at/), [MHDBDB Next](https://dhcraft.org/mhdbdb-tei-only/)
- **WB meets MHDBDB: The Wenceslas Bible as a pilot model for interoperable editions** (Aug 2025 – Dec 2026, Principal investigator): CLARIAH-AT project under my lead: integrating the Wenceslas Bible into the MHDBDB with LLM-assisted lemmatisation and POS tagging. Searchable since May 2026. [CLARIAH-AT](https://clariah.at/de/projects/wb-meets-mhdbdb/), [Project report, Mittelalter blog](https://doi.org/10.58079/16u1d)
- **The Wenceslas Bible – Digital Edition and Analysis** (Feb 2022 – Oct 2024, Research associate): Complete digital edition of the Wenceslas Bible (University of Salzburg and Austrian National Library): facsimile, transcription, reading text, Vulgate synopsis and analysis of the image programme. [Wenzelsbibel Digital](https://edition.onb.ac.at/context:wenbibel), [Department of German Studies](https://www.plus.ac.at/germanistik/forschung/foschungsprojekt-die-wenzelsbibel-digitale-edition-und-analyse/)
- **Peter Handke Notizbücher. Digitale Edition** (Oct 2025 – Sep 2028, Software developer): Edition of Peter Handke's notebooks as facsimile with transcription, commentary and indexes (ÖNB and DLA Marbach). Software development in the Research & Data Services department. [Peter Handke Notizbücher](https://edition.onb.ac.at/context:hnb), [Literary Archive of the ÖNB](https://www.onb.ac.at/sammlungen/literaturarchiv/forschung/projekte)
- **ÖSZD-ExilBriefe: Stefan and Lotte Zweig's letters from exile** (Jan 2025 – Jun 2026, Project staff): Cataloguing and digitisation of around 500 letters from the estate of Stefan and Lotte Zweig for the platform Stefan Zweig digital. [Stefan Zweig digital](https://stefanzweig.digital/), [University of Salzburg](https://uni-salzburg.elsevierpure.com/de/projects/digitalisierung-der-stefan-zweig-best%C3%A4nde-am-literaturarchiv-salz-3/)

[All projects](https://juliahin.github.io/en/projects.md)

## Latest on Bluesky

- 6 Oct 2026: Happy belated releaseday to us! ✨ Neuer Release seit 01.10. der digitalen Notizbuch-Edition von #PeterHandke an der #ÖNB: Ab sofort sind vier weitere Notizbücher (1979–1980, NB 022–NB 025) online - inklusive Volltextsuche und neuer Register: edition.onb.ac.at/context:hnb ([View on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/juliekovsky.bsky.social/post/3mx6rgtmduk2i))
- 25 Sep 2026: Wie bringt man einem LLM böhmische Schreibgewohnheiten bei? Am Beispiel der Wenzelsbibel zeigt mein CLARIAH-AT-Projekt (WB-DEA meets MHDBDB), wie historische Sprachvarianten digital aufbereitet und an die MHDBDB angebunden werden: mittelalter.hypotheses.org/41016 #DigitalHumanities #Mittelalter ([View on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/juliekovsky.bsky.social/post/3mwdbwmilyc2x))
- 11 Jun 2026: „Bildung ist eine zentrale Zukunftsinvestition“, schreibt das Bundeskanzleramt. Doch jetzt plant die Bundesregierung massive Kürzungen bei den Universitäten. Das gefährdet Forschung, Lehre und damit unsere gemeinsame Zukunft. mein.aufstehn.at/petitions/un... ([View on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/juliekovsky.bsky.social/post/3mnz3wuedic2h))

[Follow on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/juliekovsky.bsky.social)

## Latest blog posts

- 9 Jul 2026: [MHDBDB Next: Forschen ohne Datenbankserver](https://dhsalzburg.hypotheses.org/7329) (Katharina Zeppezauer-Wachauer, Alan van Beek und Julia Hintersteiner)

## Recent publications

- 9 Jul 2026: LLMs in the Service of Medieval Text Integration: WB meets MHDBDB (Presentation; Hintersteiner, Julia). DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21277766
- 17 Mar 2026: From Miniature to Metadata: AI-Assisted Iconography for Medieval Manuscripts (Presentation; Thomas, Drew; Hintersteiner, Julia). DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19065710
- 20 Feb 2026: From Miniature to Metadata: Transferring AI-Assisted Iconography to Medieval Manuscripts (Conference paper; Hintersteiner, Julia; Thomas, Drew B.). DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18696403
- 5 Feb 2026: Iconclass Annotations and LLM-Generated Descriptions for Selected Wenzelsbibel Miniatures (Dataset; Thomas, Drew B.; Hintersteiner, Julia). DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19454449

[All publications](https://juliahin.github.io/en/publications.md)

## Contact

- Email: julia.hintersteiner@plus.ac.at
- Email: julia.hintersteiner@onb.ac.at
- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-8333-3658
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/juliekovsky.bsky.social
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-hintersteiner-aa54b32a9/
- GitHub: https://github.com/juliahin

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Publications and posts are refreshed daily from ORCID, Zenodo, Bluesky and Hypotheses. Last updated: 19 Oct 2026. HTML: https://juliahin.github.io/en/