PostDoc, Toronto

The Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI) at the University of Toronto, with support from the Council of Library and Information Resources

(CLIR) offers a twelve-month Postdoctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities with a focus on digital cultures and computational approaches to humanities research. The JHI DH Postdoctoral Fellow will have an established track record in their own discipline and/or the digital humanities. They will pursue their own research while at UofT, while working to foster the JHI's DH Network at UofT. They will receive training, research, and networking opportunities through CLIR.

The mandate of the JHI DH Network is to design and support initiatives that raise awareness of and build upon UofT's existing strengths in the digital humanities. In this context, digital humanities means the communities and methods, tools, and platforms-based approaches often associated with the term "digital humanities"; and a broader agenda that also encompasses interpretative or theoretical work on digitality, and a wide variety of computational approaches to humanities research.

Responsibilities

The JHI DH Postdoctoral Fellow will be supported to attend the CLIR's Postdoctoral Fellowship program's mandatory week-long seminar (28 July-3 August 2019) at Bryn Mawr College and other CLIR events.[1] The JHI DH Postdoctoral Fellow will draw upon their disciplinary expertise and upon training provided by CLIR, the JHI, and UofT Libraries to connect and strengthen DH projects across the tricampus university. Specifically, depending on their own skillset and research interests, the JHI DH Postdoctoral Fellow will:

   * direct the development and organization of the annual summer meeting

     of the DH Network, August 2019 at UTM, in close collaboration with

     administrative staff;

   * establish and maintain online spaces where members of the DH Network

     can share information about their research and discuss matters of

     common interest;

   * run regular roundtables and workshops at the JHI and

     with UofT Libraries on digital humaniâ\x{80}\x{93}ties topics;

   * organize, facilitate, and participate in other tricampus DH training

     initiatives;

   * facilitate introductions and connections between researchers within

     the DH Network;

   * in consultation with digital librarians, provide one-on-one and

     group consultancy to humanities researchers seeking to make use of

     infrastructure for digital scholarship in and beyond UofT;

   * participate in planning the future shape and directions of the DHN

   * articipate in weekly JHI fellows lunches every Thursday from the

     beginning of September to the first week of May.

The JHI DH Postdoctoral Fellowship is a twelve-month position, from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020, co-supervised by Alexandra Gillespie and Elspeth Brown. The JHI DH Postdoctoral Fellow may seek additional research supervision from within UofT according to their own interests.

They will have access to equipment and collaborative digital working space at JHI. This fellowship award provides an annual stipend of

$51,500 (CAD) plus benefits. The incumbent is welcome to seek up to 1.0 FYE credits in teaching as a sessional instructor with the appropriate

unit(s) at the University of Toronto. The JHI DH Postdoctoral Fellow will be expected to pursue their own research; projects relevant to the JHI's annual theme of Strange Weather are particularly desired.

Annual Theme, 2019-2020: Strange Weather

How might the humanities contribute to the critical discourse on energy and climate? The energy crisis is no longer simply about limited supplies but now concerns the very nature and place of energy in human life and society. Strange weather as symptom of changing climate destabilizes our trust in and certainty of our home (i.e. our planet) and provokes fantasies of control and of chaos. How can we help frame questions of environmental degradation, scientific knowledge and its popularization, especially in their relation to social equity, and societal futures?

Elspeth H. Brown

Associate Professor, History

University of Toronto

[1] https://www.clir.org/fellowships/postdoc/