Sebastian Oliver Eck

With a strong interest in both Music and AI, I am currently pursuing an MSc in Digital Scholarship at the University of Oxford’s Humanities Division, where my research focuses on the intersection of digital humanities, musicology, and computational research methods. My academic background includes studies in (digital) musicology and intercultural music management at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar, Germany, and Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. Complemented by a Digital Humanities Certificate from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, these experiences have provided me with expertise in musicological research, digital humanities, computational linguistics, artificial intelligence (AI), and software development, which I apply to projects integrating historical musicology with the latest developments in computational research methodologies.

During my undergraduate studies, I gained teaching experience as a university lecturer at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and contributed to workshops and panel discussions advocating for the responsible integration of digital tools and generative AI (GenAI) in academic research and teaching. More recently, I have served as a committee member for the NLP4DH 2024 and NLP4DH 2025 conferences. In these roles, I have been committed to making digital scholarship more accessible to researchers and students with little or no technical background.

My previous research projects have included the development of accessible tools for music analysis, such as the Interactive Music Analysis Tool (I-MaT), as well as an exploration of generative AI for symbolic music creation in the 'Music Automat' project in Weimar (cf. projects). Currently, as part of my MSc thesis under the supervision of Dr. Kevin Page at the Oxford e-Research Centre, I am developing LLM-based OCR workflows for text extraction and classification to enhance archival research processes. This recent research explores how the latest advances in AI, particularly LLMs, can provide tools to support traditional historical and archival research.

In addition to my academic work, I regularly sing in Wadham College Chapel Choir, where, as a Choral Scholar, I take part in our weekly performances.

Projects:

02/2024 – 09/2024: Fellowship-Project 'Musik-Automat – Mit der KI im musikalischen Frage-Antwort-Spiel' [Eng.: Music Automat – With AI in a Musical Question-and-Answer Game]

Student Assistant & Contract Basis, Department of Musicology Weimar-Jena, University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar, Germany

Further Information: https://www.stifterverband.org/digital-lehrfellows-thueringen/2023/arnecke

11/2021 – 09/2022: 'Scholarly Research on and Inventorying of the Adalbert Lindner Correspondence in the Weiden City Archives'

Project Report: https://journals.qucosa.de/mimrg/article/view/3437

01/2021 – 12/2021: Fellowship-Project 'Computer-Assisted Music Analysis in Digital University Teaching'

Student Assistant, Department of Musicology Weimar-Jena, University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar, Germany

Further Information: https://analyse.hfm-weimar.de/doku.php?id=en:interaktive_musikanalyse

Publications:

Arnecke, J.; Eck, S. O.; Steuck, P.; Vaughan, A. (2024): Integrating Generative AI in Music Education. With AI in a Musical Question-Answer Game. In Proceedings of the GRANITE-EJEA-2024. GI-Edition: Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI) (pp.683-689) (peer-reviewed), available at: https://doi.org/10.18420/inf2024_54

Eck, S. O. (2023). Bridging the Gap: Demonstrating the Applicability of Linguistic Analysis Tools in Digital Musicology. In Mika Hämäläinen, Emily Öhman, et. al. (Ed.) Proceedings of the Joint 3rd International Conference on Natural Language Processing for Digital Humanities and 8th International Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Uralic Languages. Association for Computational Linguistics, Tokyo, Japan (pp.248-265) (peer-reviewed), available at: https://aclanthology.org/people/s/sebastian-oliver-eck/

Eck, S. O. (2023). Interactive Music Analysis Tool (I-MaT). In Proceedings of the JADH2023 (pp.20-23). Japanese Association for Digital Humanities (peer reviewed), available at: https://www.jadh.org/proceedings/Proceedings_JADHconf-2023-online.pdf

Eck, S. O. (2023). Wissenschaftliche Erschließung der Adalbert Lindner-Korrespondenz im Stadtarchiv Weiden. ‘Bleiben Sie Reger nur treu für Ihr ganzes Leben; Sie werden es nicht zu bereuen haben!‘. In Mitteilungen der Internationalen Max-Reger-Gesellschaft, 3(43) (pp.12-16), available at: https://journals.qucosa.de/mimrg/article/view/3437