Computational Linguistics Computational Criticism Seeking funded PhD

Modeling creativity in language, with rigorous evaluation.

Portrait of Dimitrios Papadakis
Dimitrios Papadakis Athens, Greece • M.A. Linguistics (University of Crete)
English C2 Greek L1 Python (NLP)

I am a linguistics graduate with research experience in Greek NLP resources and computational approaches to literature. My current direction focuses on how we can model and evaluate human creativity, as a cognitive capacity, through AI, especially in artistic language (poetry and narrative).

I’m open to discussing research directions in digital humanities, computational modeling of literature, Greek NLP, computational psychology, and low-resource languages.

Research interests

I am particularly interested in projects that combine careful methodology (datasets + evaluation + reproducibility) with ambitious questions about meaning, creativity, and interpretation.

Core topics Modeling creativity as a cognitive capacity • controllable generation • evaluation protocols • computational criticism • narrative and poetic structure • interpretability for creative models.
Open directions Digital humanities • computational modeling of “states of literature” (novels/poetry) • Greek NLP • computational psychology • low-resource languages and dialects.
LLMs Expert evaluation Poetry & narrative Greek NLP Digital Humanities Low-resource

PhD proposal (developed by me)

“Αν δεν πάει ο Μωάμεθ στο βουνό, πάει το βουνό στο Μωάμεθ.”

In English, it roughly means: “If Muhammad won’t go to the mountain, the mountain goes to Muhammad.” In doctoral research, candidates typically either apply to projects with predefined topics or collaborate with a prospective supervisor to develop an original idea and secure funding. Here, I adopt the “mountain comes to Muhammad” approach: a twist on the second pathway, framed through a personal website 🙂.

This is a proposal I have already worked on, and I would be genuinely happy to discuss it (or adapt it) with potential supervisors and labs.

Working title Modeling Artistic Creativity in Poetry and Story Generation with Controllable LLMs and Diffusion-Based Language Models.
High-level question How can we model and evaluate creativity in artistic language generation—beyond surface novelty—so that it connects to human judgments of value?
Proposed approach (short) A controllable pipeline where an LLM drafts poems/stories and a refinement stage edits texts under explicit constraints (e.g., style, imagery, narrative arc), paired with expert-centered evaluation.
Evaluation focus Human-centered protocols (e.g., poets/critics) with structured rubrics, reliability checks, and metrics that better align with “creative value,” not just fluency.

I’m very open to discussing adjacent topics in computational creativity, digital humanities, narrative modeling, Greek NLP, computational psychology, and low-resource language settings.

Looking for funded PhD opportunities

I am currently seeking fully funded PhD positions (or scholarship-funded doctoral programs) in NLP and related interdisciplinary areas. I’m especially interested in environments that value careful evaluation, dataset design, and theory-informed modeling.

Best fit NLP • computational creativity • controllable generation • evaluation of creative language • computational literary studies / digital humanities.
I can contribute Dataset design (including Greek/low-resource) • annotation protocols • expert-centered evaluation (rubrics + reliability) • experimental design • bridging NLP with literary-critical concepts (form, imagery, narrative coherence).
Funded PhD Research assistantships Scholarships Interdisciplinary labs Greek / low-resource

If you are planning a grant application or have an open funded position, I can share a tailored research statement and a short project plan adapted to your lab’s focus.

Publications

Selected publications and research outputs. I provide local PDFs and BibTeX entries for quick access.

Year Reference
2025 Papadakis, Dimitrios. A Computational Criticism Analysis of Papadiamantis’ Work.
PDF
BibTeX
@article{papadakis2025computational,
  title={A Computational Criticism Analysis of Papadiamantis’ Work},
  author={Papadakis, Dimitrios},
  year={2025}
}
2022 Amanaki, E., Bernardy, J.-P., Chatzikyriakidis, S., Cooper, R., Dobnik, S., Karimi, A., Ek, A., Giannikouri, E. C., Katsouli, V., Kolokousis, I., Mamatzaki, E. C., Papadakis, D., Petrova, O., Psaltaki, E., Soupiona, C., Skoulataki, E., Stefanidou, C. Fine-grained Entailment: Resources for Greek NLI and Precise Entailment. Proceedings of the Workshop on Dataset Creation for Lower-Resourced Languages (LREC 2022).
PDF ACL Anthology
BibTeX
@inproceedings{amanaki-etal-2022-fine,
  title = "Fine-grained Entailment: Resources for {G}reek {NLI} and Precise Entailment",
  author = "Amanaki, Eirini  and
    Bernardy, Jean-Philippe  and
    Chatzikyriakidis, Stergios  and
    Cooper, Robin  and
    Dobnik, Simon  and
    Karimi, Aram  and
    Ek, Adam  and
    Giannikouri, Eirini Chrysovalantou  and
    Katsouli, Vasiliki  and
    Kolokousis, Ilias  and
    Mamatzaki, Eirini Chrysovalantou  and
    Papadakis, Dimitrios  and
    Petrova, Olga  and
    Psaltaki, Erofili  and
    Soupiona, Charikleia  and
    Skoulataki, Effrosyni  and
    Stefanidou, Christina",
  booktitle = "Proceedings of the Workshop on Dataset Creation for Lower-Resourced Languages",
  month = jun,
  year = "2022",
  address = "Marseille, France",
  publisher = "European Language Resources Association",
  url = "https://aclanthology.org/2022.dclrl-1.6/",
  pages = "44--52"
}
2023 Chatzikyriakidis, S., Qwaider, C., Kolokousis, I., Koula, C., Papadakis, D., & Sakellariou, E. GRDD: A Dataset for Greek Dialectal NLP. arXiv:2308.00802.
PDF arXiv
BibTeX
@article{chatzikyriakidis2023grdd,
  title={GRDD: A Dataset for Greek Dialectal NLP},
  author={Chatzikyriakidis, Stergios and Qwaider, Chatrine and Kolokousis, Ilias and Koula, Christina and Papadakis, Dimitris and Sakellariou, Efthymia},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.00802},
  year={2023}
}
2024 Kogkalidis, K., Chatzikyriakidis, S., Giannikouri, E., Katsouli, V., Klironomou, C., Koula, C., Papadakis, D., Pasparaki, T., Psaltaki, E., Sakellariou, E., et al. OYXOY: A Modern NLP Test Suite for Modern Greek. Findings of ACL: EACL 2024, 311–322.
PDF
BibTeX
@inproceedings{kogkalidis2024oyxoy,
  title={OYXOY: A Modern NLP Test Suite for Modern Greek},
  author={Kogkalidis, Konstantinos and Chatzikyriakidis, Stergios and Giannikouri, Eirini and Katsouli, Vasiliki and Klironomou, Christina and Koula, Christina and Papadakis, Dimitris and Pasparaki, Thelka and Psaltaki, Erofili and Sakellariou, Efthymia and others},
  booktitle={Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EACL 2024},
  pages={311--322},
  year={2024}
}
2025 Chatzikyriakidis, S., Papadakis, D., Papaioannou, S.-I., & Psaltaki, E. GRDD+: An Extended Greek Dialectal Dataset with Cross-Architecture Fine-tuning Evaluation. arXiv:2511.03772.
PDF arXiv
BibTeX
@article{chatzikyriakidis2025grdd+,
  title={GRDD+: An Extended Greek Dialectal Dataset with Cross-Architecture Fine-tuning Evaluation},
  author={Chatzikyriakidis, Stergios and Papadakis, Dimitris and Papaioannou, Sevasti-Ioanna and Psaltaki, Erofili},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.03772},
  year={2025}
}
2026 Chatzikyriakidis, S., Psaltaki, E., Papadakis, D., Henriksson, E. and Laippala, V. Perplexity as a Metric for Dialectal Distance: A Computational Study of Greek Varieties. Proceedings of VarDial 2026, EACL 2026.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{chatzikyriakidis2026perplexity,
  title={Perplexity as a Metric for Dialectal Distance: A Computational Study of Greek Varieties},
  author={Chatzikyriakidis, Stergios and Psaltaki, Erofili and Papadakis, Dimitrios and Henriksson, E. and Laippala, Veronika},
  booktitle={Proceedings of VarDial 2026},
  year={2026},
  note={EACL 2026}
}

Work experience (selected)

Selected professional roles across AI, education, operations, and administrative support.

Co-founder & Sales Manager — SimasiaAI Current • AI solutions with social impact and human-centered product development
Data Analyst & Back-Office Operator — ThinkVilla Bespoke Stays Apr 2024 – Sep 2024 • Rethymno, Greece
Erasmus+ Project Coordinator — European Education and Learning Institute Apr 2023 – Oct 2023 • Rethymno, Greece • Research programs and student mobility coordination
Administrative / Secretarial Support — Athens Water Supply and Sewerage Company (EYDAP) Jul 2025 – Aug 2025 • Customer Service Directorate • Athens, Greece
Library Cataloguer — Hellenic Parliament Library (School of Halki) Jun 2022 – Sep 2022 • Istanbul, Turkey
Paid part-time staff (M.A. Linguistics) — University of Crete Oct 2023 • Dept. of Philology, School of Philosophy, Rethymno, Greece • Awarded based on candidate evaluation criteria; support for the M.A. program in Linguistics

Research experience (all roles)

Research Assistant — University of Crete (ELKE) May 2023 – Jul 2023 • Project: Creation of datasets for Computational Processing of the Greek Language
Research Assistant — University of Crete (ELKE) May 2023 – Nov 2023 • Project: Field research for the collection of linguistic data from child speech and processing of the collected data
Research Assistant — University of Crete (ELKE) May 2024 – Jun 2024 • Project: Creation of datasets for Computational Processing of the Greek Language

Internships (all roles)

Internship Trainee — University of Crete Sep 2021 – Feb 2022 • Dept. of Philology — 1st High School of Atsipopoulo • Rethymno, Greece
Internship Trainee (Erasmus+) — School of Halki’s Library Mar 2022 – May 2022 • Istanbul, Turkey
Internship Trainee (Erasmus+) — LORIA (Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications) Feb 2025 – May 2025 • Nancy, France

Teaching experience

Teaching Assistant — University of Crete Sep 2022 – Feb 2023 • Undergraduate course GLOF142: Introduction to Computational Linguistics
Teaching Assistant — University of Crete Feb 2023 – Jun 2023 • Undergraduate course GLOF175: Levels of Grammar
Instructor — Creative Writing Seminar Oct 2024 – Jan 2025 • Cultural Center of EYDAP Employees, Athens, Greece
Instructor — Creative Writing Seminar Oct 2025 – Jan 2026 • Cultural Center of EYDAP Employees, Athens, Greece

Contact

If you have a funded PhD position, a potential collaboration, or you want to discuss the proposal (or related topics), feel free to contact me.

Contact form

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Prefer email? Write directly to papasjim98@yahoo.gr.