Martin Roček
Senior developer at Charles University, doing 🪄 in JS/TS, PHP and a bit of Python. Freelance designer on the side.
Freelance programmer and designer at Self-employed
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Career: 6
Freelance programmer and designer
Self-employed
Remote
Mar 2014 - Present
Freelance programmer and designer
Self-employed
Remote
Freelance design and frontend development, working with founders and small teams who need both handled by one person. Visual identity work — logos, brand systems, type and colour decisions — through to high-fidelity interfaces built in React (sometimes Vue, with Laravel on the backend when the project calls for it). Most engagements run end to end: starting with the brand or the blank page, ending with a site or product that's actually shipped. The design leads, the code follows — but I'm the one doing both, so nothing gets lost in translation between the two. Small, considered work for people who notice the details. Or, put another way: I'm the designer who writes React, and the developer who spends too long picking the right weight of a typeface.
Full Stack Engineer
Faculty of Arts, Charles University
Oct 2022 - Present
Full Stack Engineer
Faculty of Arts, Charles University
Senior developer on the tech team, working across the faculty on tools for humanities research. Most of the work falls into three overlapping areas: Building internal web applications end to end — design, frontend, backend — in Next.js, Express, and Laravel. These are the tools departments actually use day to day: workflow systems, data management, the unglamorous infrastructure that makes research admin less painful. Sitting between the technology and the researchers. A lot of my job is translation: helping humanities projects figure out what they actually need technically, sketching architectures, and making sure the computational side stays approachable for people whose background isn’t in code. Full-stack engineering on top of that — frontend interfaces and backend APIs built around the shape of academic data, which rarely looks like anything a standard CRUD app expects.
Scholarship Holder
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
Jan 2023 - Dec 2023
Scholarship Holder
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
Worked on various digital humanities applications and approaches.
Principal Investigator
Charles University
May 2021 - Apr 2023
Principal Investigator
Charles University
Principal Investigator of the project 'Dreams, Money and Christ: Popular Texts and Their Transmission in the Late Middle Ages", the aim was to develop a prototype application that would allow semantic comparison of medieval Latin texts using machine learning.
Graphic Artist (volunteer)
Isleward
May 2016 - Jan 2018
Graphic Artist (volunteer)
Isleward
Isleward is a moddable, multiplayer roguelike game that runs in a browser. I contribute to the project's code and work closely with the author on server infrastructure and deployment.
Archivist
Vojenský ústřední archiv
Aug 2013 - Feb 2016
Archivist
Vojenský ústřední archiv
Education: 4
Charles University
Doctor of Philosophy, Medieval and Neo-Latin Studies
Jan 2019 - Jan 2025
Charles University
Doctor of Philosophy, Medieval and Neo-Latin Studies
Thesis: Unraveling the Contaminated Tradition: Medieval Dreambooks in Bohemical Manuscripts
Charles University
Master's degree, General History
Jan 2016 - Jan 2019
Charles University
Master's degree, General History
Thesis: Monsters in Medieval Imagination of British Isles
Aberystwyth University
Erasmus
2018
Aberystwyth University
Erasmus
Charles University
Bachelor's degree, History
Jan 2012 - Jan 2016
Charles University
Bachelor's degree, History
Thesis: Dispute over Catholic and Protestant notions of purgatory in the 16th century
Projects: 8
Translucens
translucens.humanities.tools
Jan 2026 - Present
Translucens
translucens.humanities.tools
A browser-based application designed to restore legibility to digitized medieval manuscripts by removing ink bleed-through. By aligning and processing recto/verso scans, the tool provides humanists and researchers with a streamlined way to enhance historical documents without requiring specialized technical expertise. Stack: React.js, Vite, Python
MANU
manu.is
Jun 2024 - Present
MANU
manu.is
A collaborative workspace for digital humanities research. Manu enables scholars to import IIIF-based manuscripts, apply precision annotations, and generate AI transcriptions via Google Gemini. The platform prioritizes open standards (W3C) and data portability, providing a robust infrastructure for both individual and institutional research projects. Stack: Next.js, WebSockets, Node.js, MongoDB
Hodnocení akademických a vědeckých pracovníků
Apr 2022 - Present
Hodnocení akademických a vědeckých pracovníků
An application for evaluation of academic staff. Tech: Express.js, Next.js, MongoDB, websockets
Bosworth-Toller's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online
bosworthtoller.com
Sep 2017 - Present
Bosworth-Toller's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online
bosworthtoller.com
An online version of the Bosworth-Toller's Anglo-Saxon dictionary. Stack: Laravel, Nuxt.js, MySQL
SilentBox
github.com/silencesys/silentbox
Sep 2017 - Present
SilentBox
github.com/silencesys/silentbox
A lightbox inspired Vue.js component.
Evaluace
evaluace.ff.cuni.cz/results
Jul 2016 - Present
Evaluace
evaluace.ff.cuni.cz/results
An app for student’s evaluation of lectures and teachers at Charles University. Stack: Laravel, MySQL, Vue
Lipnice Bible
lipnicebible.ff.cuni.cz
Jan 2021 - May 2021
Lipnice Bible
lipnicebible.ff.cuni.cz
Web application presenting the manuscript of the Lipnice Bible. Stack: Express.js, MongoDB, Nuxt.js
Vocabula.lat
vocabula.lat
Vocabula.lat
vocabula.lat
Vocabula.lat is not exactly a dictionary, but rather a tool that aggregates data from several other dictionaries. It was developed as a tool to help me translate my latin texts and provide me with grammatical information about each word. Stack: React.js, Express.js
Credentials: 1
Natural Language Processing with Machine Learning
Educative, Inc.
Publications: 5
Vibe-Coding in (Digital) Humanities
leaflet.rocek.dev
Other publications
Bosworth-Toller’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online
Structuring Lexical Data and Digitising Dictionaries
Book ChapterTichý, Ondřej, Roček, Martin
Beyond the Canon: Exploring Overlooked Medieval Texts
Doležalová, Lucie, Fúsik, Ondřej, Kozák, Jakub, Pacovský, Karel, Roček, Martin
Výklad snů
Opuscula.Neznámá dílka z rukopisů Kříže z Telče
Book ChapterRoček, Martin, Doležalová, Lucie, Králová, Magda
Opuscula - korpus latinských textů z rukopisů Kříže z Telče
Doležalová, Lucie, Bendová, Berenika, Dragoun, Michal, Fúsik, Ondřej, Hlaváčková, Veronika, Kozák, Jakub, Pacovský, Karel, Roček, Martin, Tříska, Pavel