Silvia Tomescu | Digital Humanities Researcher

About

My research lies at the intersection of Digital Humanities, Library and Information Science, and cultural heritage, focusing on knowledge representation, digital memory infrastructures, and semantic interoperability.

Particular areas of interest include Romanian documentary and intangible heritage, early modern print culture, TEI-based modelling of historical sources, and the modelling of cultural knowledge.

Research Interests & Methods

Selected Publications

Nițu, M.; Rușeți, Ș.; Dascălu, M.; Tomescu, S. (2020). Semantic Recommendations of Books Using Recurrent Neural Networks. In: Ludic, Co-design and Tools Supporting Smart Learning Ecosystems and Smart Education, pp. 235–243. DOI: 10.1007/978-981-15-7383-5_20
Mitocaru, I.; Guțu-Robu, G.; Nițu, M.; Dascălu, M.; Trăușan-Matu, Ș.; Tomescu, S.; Florescu, G. (2020). The Lib2Life Platform – Processing, Indexing and Semantic Search for Old Romanian Documents. RoCHI – International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction.
Guțu-Robu, G.; Rușeți, Ș.; Tomescu, S.-A.; Dascălu, M.; Trăușan-Matu, Ș. (2020). Designing an Ontology for Knowledge-Based Processing in Romanian University Libraries. In: The 16th International Scientific Conference eLearning and Software for Education. DOI: 10.12753/2066-026X-20-000
Nițu, M.; Dascălu, M.; Dascălu, M.-I.; Coteț, T. M.; Tomescu, S. (2019). Reconstructing Scanned Documents for Full-Text Indexing to Empower Digital Library Services. In: Emerging Technologies for Education (SETE 2019), Springer.
Tomescu, S.-A. (2018). Blended Learning Methodology for Library Professionals “Carol I” Central University. eLearning and Software for Education Conference Proceedings.
Tomescu, S.-A. (2012). Relații româno-canadiene. Bibliografie generală. University of Bucharest Press. ISBN 978-606-16-0206-3.

Selected Presentations

5th DARIAH-HR International Conference, Osijek (2025)
Modelling Romanian Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Microontological Approach
National Library of Lithuania, Vilnius — Acutus et Argutus: Early Modern Print Culture in Motion (2025)
The Grammar of Memory: Cultural Ontologies for Early Romanian Printings

Selected Projects

Concert@SNSPA (25 April–30 November 2025)
Academic Key Expert · CNFIS-FDI-2025-F-0250. Strengthening institutional research capacity and promoting Open Science. National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA).
Success@SNSPA (24 April–30 November 2024)
Research Expert · CNFIS-FDI-2024-F-0141. Institutional-level research support services in Open Access. National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA).
#IncluzivEdu (25 April–30 June 2024)
Educational Resources Expert · CNFIS-FDI-2024-F-0250. Inclusive education and equal opportunities for persons with disabilities in the academic community. National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA).
Lib2Life (2018–2021)
Smart Search subproject coordinator. Developed domain ontologies and contributed to semantic search workflows through annotation and correction of digitized texts. Worked on knowledge organization, semantic modelling, and evaluation of search relevance.
Project website
Digitization of "George Bacovia" Manuscripts (2006)
Project manager for the digitization and structuring of literary archival materials.
Automated Library Collections Management (2003–2005)
Project manager for the implementation of barcode-based collection management and circulation workflows.

Academic Service

Peer Reviewer – ADHO Digital Humanities (DH) Conferences: DH2022 (Tokyo), DH2023 (Graz), DH2024 (Washington, DC), DH2025 (Lisbon, Portugal), DH2026 (Daejeon, South Korea)
Peer Reviewer – EADH (European Association for Digital Humanities)
Programme Committee – LD4 Conference 2026; Technical & Accessibility Team and Social Team
Peer Reviewer – International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL)
Peer Reviewer – eLearning and Software for Education (eLSE)
Copyeditor – Information Research: An International Electronic Journal
Research Projects Evaluator – UEFISCDI, Romania

Education

PhD, University of Bucharest
Magna cum laude

Selected Training & Professional Workshops

2026 — Université Savoie Mont Blanc
TOTh Training: Bringing Artificial Intelligence to Terminology: A Step-by-Step Project Approach
2026 — BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe
10th Annual Meeting · 8–9 September · Barcelona, Spain
2025 — Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School
AI in Research Libraries · University of Oxford
2025 — Université Savoie Mont Blanc
Terminology & Artificial Intelligence: Knowledge Graphs with LLMs, Prompting and RAG
2024 — Université Savoie Mont Blanc
Terminology & Artificial Intelligence: Ontologies and Knowledge Graphs
2023 — OpenAIRE
Open Science Train-the-Trainer Bootcamp
Open Science Trainer accreditation badge
2023 — École Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Tarbes
Training on Ontology Engineering using the OntoCommons Ecosystem
2023 — Hertie School Data Science Lab
Data Science Summer School