Cultural-Heritage AI Data Governance Adviser

The mandate

The council repeatedly confronts whether digitised manuscripts, images, catalogue records and conservation data may train retrieval, transcription or generative systems when ownership, custody, cultural restriction and publication status do not align. Pilot teams want one permission rule, but collections require distinct treatment of source authority, disputed provenance, sensitive context, generated reconstruction and downstream research access.

The adviser will reserve three working days each month for a collection-and-model evidence session, a council or co-chair meeting, and preparation or individual conversations with custodians and technical leads. Four council meetings are included; urgent questions about a proposed dataset or public feature receive acknowledgement within one business day and a considered view within four.

The term lasts eight months and closes after the council considers its AI collections charter and two pilot decisions. Both co-chairs may jointly propose one renewal of up to four months for a named unresolved custodial agreement, but renewal requires consortium approval and delayed digitisation does not extend the appointment automatically.

The adviser has no line authority, custodial authority, ownership claim, board vote or executive responsibility for collection access, research approval, model training, generated interpretation, publication or contracting. Each holding institution and designated custodian retains its decisions; the adviser shapes a traceable process and cannot privately waive a restriction or authenticate historical content.

Academic, museum and public-interest appointments may continue after disclosure. A commercial relationship with a bidding model or digitisation vendor, private claim over material under review, sponsored research using the same restricted collection, or mandate for a disputing claimant creates a conflict requiring access limits, recusal or termination.

Why the board wants this voice

Curators understand collections and technologists understand the pilots, but the council lacks someone who has translated layered authority and provenance into machine-readable controls. Existing debate treats digitisation as permission for every later computational use. The co-chairs want an adviser who can preserve research value while preventing generated confidence from obscuring contested history or restricted stewardship.

What you will own

• Press institutions to distinguish ownership, custody, access, reproduction, research, training, transformation and publication decisions for each collection class.
• Test provenance lineage from physical object and catalogue assertion through scan, transcription, annotation, embedding, derivative and model output.
• Shape machine-readable restrictions covering purpose, user, geography, duration, attribution, generated reconstruction, retention and withdrawal.
• Challenge model evaluations for script variation, damaged sources, curatorial disagreement, unsupported completion, harmful context and false attribution.
• Probe public experiences so synthetic restoration, translation and interpretation remain visibly separated from observed artefact and scholarly claim.
• Evaluate vendor and research agreements for improvement rights, derivative ownership, model retention, audit, return, deletion and downstream access.
• Frame the council’s charter with authority maps, pilot gates, dissent, disputed provenance, expiring permissions and unresolved questions.

Candidate qualifications

• Governed AI, digitisation or computational research over museum, archive, language or other culturally sensitive collections.
• Converted layered ownership, custody and access restrictions into technical provenance, permission and derivative-use controls.
• Stopped or redesigned a generated interpretation after curator, custodian or provenance evidence made the original presentation misleading.
• Built evaluation with domain specialists where transcription, reconstruction or classification had legitimate scholarly disagreement.
• Negotiated collection-data terms with research institutions and technology suppliers without treating public display as unrestricted reuse.
• Advised a multi-institution council while preserving confidentiality and the distinct authority of each holding or custodial body.

Non-negotiables

• Can attend all four Cairo council meetings and travel to the three designated collection or custodian sessions under host protocols.
• Will disclose collection claims, research sponsorship, institutional roles and vendor economics before reviewing restricted material.
• Accepts no authority to grant access, settle provenance, authenticate an artefact or approve generated historical interpretation.
• No protected collection image, record or model output may enter personal systems, public tools or unrelated research.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe one collection restriction that changed an AI or digitisation design and how the control was enforced.
2. 49 words maximum. Which current institutional, vendor, claimant or research relationship could constrain your independence here?
3. 49 words maximum. Confirm the Cairo cadence and explain how you would label generated reconstruction separately from observed evidence.