Lancaster University
Professorship (or Senior
Lectureship) in Digital Humanities
The newly formed Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences at Lancaster wishes
to appoint a Professor or Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities. The
appointment will be from Summer 2006 and is a permanent position.
The appointment should be
seen in the context of a longer-term aim to establish a critical mass of
researchers interested in the digital humanities. The establishment of this
post is the first step towards creating such a grouping.
Background
At
least two major reports have emerged recently that signal a way forward for ICT
in the humanities and arts (and social sciences). First, the AHRC Delivery Plan
argues the need for greater capacity in ‘grid technologies’, suggesting that
research is needed in locating, accessing and integrating distributed resources
that take the form of text, images and sound. Humanities Computing is therefore
one of the key areas flagged in the Delivery Plan. There is already an ICT
Methods Network funded by AHRC (and hosted by King’s College London, in which
Lancaster is involved as a partner institution) which aims to preserve and
provide access to digital resources and to guide new developments and advanced
methodologies. We wish Lancaster to play a leading part in both the Network and
in driving forward this initiative more broadly.
Second,
the British Academy produced in May 2005 a report on ‘E-resources for research
in the humanities and social sciences’. Among its recommendations are that
Universities ensure that researchers have adequate access to technical support
in this field and that such researchers promote the use of ICT where they can.
The
creation of a new Faculty at Lancaster University provides a platform whereby
an initiative in this area can be actively promoted and nurtured. Further, the
University is keen to capitalise on the existing research base by establishing
itself as a centre of excellence in the North West for ICT in the humanities and
arts.
Lancaster
is involved in the following activities related to Humanities Computing
(classified by Department); the list is skeletal and illustrative only:
Linguistics – and especially corpus
linguistics, lexicography and historical linguistics; use of semantic tagging,
applications to dictionary production
Contemporary
Arts (Music, Theatre, Art) – the use of new media in experimental performance; digital art
installations, music software, computer representations of music
English – applications to mediaeval
theatre and manuscript studies, and to handling of material relating to Quakers
in the North-West; Ruskinian materials; Chartist poetry; crime fiction
History – digitising of calendar
records, recent and contemporary oral history materials
Institute
for Cultural Research – cultural memory (oral histories)
Technical and equipment support
Some dedicated technical support will be provided to the post-holder. The
successful candidate will be invited to help determine, in consultation with
others, the nature of this technical support and the equipment resources
associated with this initiative. We have already been given an equipment grant
to set up digitisation facilities. We intend that the successful candidate will
develop a plan for the use of such facilities, thereby creating an income
stream (from teaching, and from external sources) to help further develop a
programme of activity.
Departmental affiliation
The
administrative location of the successful candidate will, initially, be at
Faculty level. It is not immediately envisaged that the candidate will be a
member of an academic Department. This is to signal that the initiative is seen
as a Faculty-wide one in which the post-holder helps to generate momentum
across a range of potential stakeholders.
Job description
The
successful candidate will, initially, be directly responsible to the Dean of
the Faculty.
Key
internal contacts will be colleagues working in the host and cognate departments in the
Faculty and outside, and in seeking to develop external funding the post-holder
will be in close contact with other staff in the Faculty, including the
Associate Dean for Research & Enterprise and the Research & Enterprise
Support Officer.
Externally, we expect the post-holder
to develop relationships with appropriate organisations and individuals
therein, both regionally and nationally. Examples include the Research Councils
(notably AHRC) and regional galleries and museums.
Major
duties will
include:
- Developing a research
agenda, including the preparation of significant outputs for RAE2008 in an
appropriate Unit of Assessment;
- working with others to
establish new degree schemes, initially at postgraduate level, that are
likely to recruit significant numbers of students;
- submitting applications
for research funding to a range of funding agencies;
- liaising with external
stakeholders (including museums, libraries and galleries) over their
digitising needs;
- advising colleagues in
humanities and social sciences on advanced research methods using ICT;
- helping to promote the
use of advanced ICT throughout the University;
- helping to establish an
international profile for Lancaster University in this field.
The
post-holder will have flexibility to scope the development of the initiative.
In particular, we would expect the post-holder to explore the possibilities for
establishing a digitising service for the wider region as a means of helping to
sustain the academic programme.
Person specification
We
seek a dynamic and committed researcher to help develop further the Faculty’s
interests in humanities computing.
Essential requirements
- A PhD in a relevant
research area. The precise
disciplinary background of candidates matters less than a willingness to
engage enthusiastically with academics from a range of disciplines,
including, inter alia, English, Creative Arts (Theatre Studies,
Art, Music), Linguistics, History, and Cultural Research.
- Evidence of the use of
advanced ICT, relating to the humanities or arts, in their own research
- A suitable track record
of published work, commensurate with an entry to an appropriate Unit of
Assessment for the next Research Assessment Exercise (2008)
- Evidence of an ability
to take a leadership role for the area of ICT in the social sciences and
arts
- Evidence of ability to
attract external research funding
- Experience of teaching
in higher education, preferably at both undergraduate and postgraduate
level
·
Evidence of an outward looking perspective, in the
sense of an ability to engage both with other Faculties at Lancaster, other
Universities, and other public and private sector organisations.
- Effective personal,
written and oral communication skills
Desirable
- Experience of designing
relevant programmes of study.