A research laboratory
Six fields of inquiry, from knowledge representation to AI and society.
About TALOS
The Laboratory
At the University of Crete, humanistic inquiry and artificial intelligence meet to build better ways of studying language, culture, knowledge and society.
Vision
AI shaped by humanistic inquiry
ALOS advances artificial intelligence with, and for, the humanities and social sciences. Our starting point is simple: computational methods should extend scholarly interpretation, not replace it.
Established as a permanent interdisciplinary laboratory at the University of Crete, TALOS brings computer scientists into sustained collaboration with scholars of language, history, archaeology, philosophy, education and society. Together, they develop semantic technologies, knowledge graphs and critically grounded AI methods for research questions that no single discipline can answer alone.
The laboratory combines research with infrastructure, education and collaboration. It produces open datasets and reusable tools, trains students and researchers, and creates durable links among universities, cultural institutions, public organisations and technology partners.
Our methods are designed around provenance, uncertainty, interpretation and accountability—qualities essential to cultural and social knowledge. Through open data, reusable software and shared standards, TALOS makes research materials easier to discover, connect, examine and reuse while preserving the scholarly context that gives them meaning.
A shared digital infrastructure
Open datasets with DOIs, a public SPARQL endpoint, and the tools that read them.
A centre for education
Teaching, summer schools, seminars and doctoral supervision.
A collaborative platform
International partnerships across universities, cultural institutions and standards bodies.
The laboratory
Research begins with people in the same room
A philologist, an archaeologist and a computer scientist may approach the same source differently. TALOS turns those differences into a shared method: questions are defined together, evidence remains traceable, and technology is evaluated against genuine scholarly needs.
Built in Crete,
connected across disciplines.
TALOS grew from the University of Crete’s commitment to making artificial intelligence part of a broader culture of inquiry. The ERA Chair project created the conditions for that growth; the laboratory carries it forward as a permanent home for ambitious research, education and open scholarship.
Researchers, doctoral candidates, students and visiting scholars work across ancient and modern languages, cultural heritage, philosophy, education and social research. Their work ranges from semantic annotation and natural-language processing to ontologies, digital collections and the critical study of AI in society—with every project grounded in domain knowledge and designed for reuse.