University of Toronto

NOTE: All postdoctoral fellowship positions are contingent upon funding. Applications are accepted via CLIR's online application system. Review of applications is already underway, but applications will be accepted until all positions are filled.

CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship for Data Curation in Medieval Studies, Centre for Medieval Studies and Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto

The Centre for Medieval Studies (CMS) and Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI) at the University of Toronto offer a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship in Data Curation for Medieval Studies, with support from the Council of Library and Information Research (CLIR). The CLIR Fellow will have an established track record in medieval studies and in digital humanities. He or she will pursue his or her own research while at UofT, while receiving training and career development opportunities in the area of medieval data curation and while building on UofT’s capacity for active and on-going management of data from medieval digital projects.

Background

UofT is home to the Dictionary of Old English and Records of Early English Drama, two of the longest-standing and most consequential projects in digital medieval studies. Medievalists based at CMS and affiliated to JHI are involved as investigators and advisers in other inter-institutional and internationally collaborative digital projects, including manuscript digitization projects; use-cases for testing annotation and transcription tools for the study of digitized manuscripts; digital editions of medieval Latin and vernacular texts; and pedagogical initiatives including online palaeography course development.

Digital medieval studies at UofT are supported by University of Toronto Libraries’ Information Technology Services (ITS). The librarians, developers, and information architects at ITS have two decades’ experience with innovative projects in the digital humanities. They provide scholars with robust infrastructural support for their projects, assist with digital tool development and repurposing, and manage project data over its lifecycle.

Following a longstanding practice of collaboration between the UofT Libraries and digital humanists at UofT, CMS and ITS have recently come together to form a UofT Consortium of Digital Medieval Studies. This group aims to foster innovative connections between UofT’s digital medieval projects; to build bridges between medieval scholars and library and information technology specialists; and to enhance the status UofT already enjoys as a hub for digital scholarship in medieval studies. The consortium’s members recognize the importance of best data curation practices, based on partnerships between librarians and subject specialists, for the long-term success of projects in the digital humanities and the need for UofT to continue to build its capacity in this area. The CLIR Fellowship is offered to this end.

Position Responsibilities

The history, sheer number, and wide range of digital medieval projects at UofT present scholars and information technology specialists with special challenges in the area of data curation. The CLIR Fellow will be required to draw upon his or her disciplinary expertise and upon on-the-job training provided by UofT’s ITS librarians and IT staff to meet these challenges, especially in the following areas: education for scholars in data curation around standards, documentation, and the link between data creation and data management; interoperable standard data formats, open access data, and copyright issues; planning for data migration and data obsolescence; data clean-up and normalization schemes; and linked data and the semantic web.

The CLIR Fellow may:

conduct a review of current practices and support services in data curation in medieval studies at UofT with guidance from the steering group of the Consortium of Digital Medieval Studies and in consultation with UofT scholars in digital medieval studies, other UofT digital humanists, curators and developers at ITS, and faculty from the Digital Curation Institute in UofT’s iSchool;
prepare a statement of best practices in digital preservation and data curation for medieval studies at UofT for the Consortium of Digital Medieval Studies;
work directly with scholars and ITS staff to anticipate, identify, and address data curation needs for members’ individual and major collaborative projects and grant applications;
organize regular faculty and graduate student workshops at CMS on digital projects in medieval studies, with a focus on data creation and curation;
assist with organization of: a) a 2014 Consortium of Digital Medieval Studies symposium for faculty and librarians and their national and international collaborators to discuss current and future work in digital medieval studies; b) the 2014 CMS Graduate Student Conference “Digitizing the Medieval Archive”; and
assist with interface and content of the Consortium of Digital Medieval Studies’ online archive of resources for medieval scholars with interests in digital research, with a particular focus on educational materials and resources in data management.

The CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow will also be expected to pursue his or her own research in digital medieval studies. Suitable projects may include: a digital edition or catalogue; the development of digital tools that use techniques such as data visualization, data mining, and textual analysis; a usecase project for a digital tool or archive; digital archive or resource development; and research on the impact on medieval studies of digital technologies, including social media and open access scholarship.

The CLIR Fellow will be supervised by Alexandra Gillespie, Associate Professor, CMS, with support from digital humanities staff at ITS in UofT Libraries. He or she may seek additional research supervision from within CMS according to his or her special research interests. The CLIR Fellow will report annually to the Director of CMS. He or she will have access to office space at CMS; equipment and collaborative digital working space at JHI; and shared space at ITS when necessary for training purposes. The CLIR Fellowship provides an annual stipend of $60,000. The successful candidate will also be entitled to additional funding for expenses associated with his or her research.

Eligibility and Attributes

Applicants must have completed their degrees within five years of the beginning of the fellowship (1 July 2013). Applicants who will defend their thesis before 1 May 2013 are eligible, but a letter from their supervisor or Chair may be requested. Any award will be conditional on a successful defense. Applicants who received their Ph.D. prior to 1 July 2008 are ineligible.

The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate excellence in teaching and research and have an established track record in digital humanities. He or she will have understanding of and interest in data curation practices specific to medieval studies and data life-cycle management systems generally; the ability to assess institutional processes and policies; willingness to work with a range of scholars in and outside of medieval studies; desire to learn and pursue research in an interdisciplinary, collaborative environment; and interest in open source development and open access scholarship.

The CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship is open to citizens of all states. The University of Toronto is strongly committed to diversity within its community and especially welcomes applications from visible minority group members, women, Aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, members of sexual minority groups, and others who may further expand the range of ideas and perspectives.