Williams College Museum of Art invites applications for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship. The Fellow’s work is part of WCMA Digital, a major initiative supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that aims to make the museum’s collections open and accessible to all, and develop a set of digital tools to support new pedagogical, creative and intellectual explorations of the collection.

WCMA’s Mellon Fellow for Digital Humanities will explore and encourage digital humanities scholarship and methodologies within a museum context, with access to collections and involvement in exhibitions and public programs. WCMA is uniquely suited to connect and collaborate with programs, people and projects across campus. The project builds on digital humanities projects across the College in the departments of English, History and American Studies, and the College’s Library.

Reporting to WCMA’s Mellon Manager of Digital Initiatives, the Fellow will be part of the vibrant and collaborative staff at WCMA.

The Fellow will also be art of Williams’ academic community, including its postdoc peer group, which spans academic programs. Undergraduate research is an emphasis at Williams, and this position will have the opportunity to work closely with talented, research-oriented college students.

Responsibilities

• Explore, investigate, and evaluate emerging tools and technologies related to your research and the WCMA collection.
• Develop (or lead the development of) tools for the investigation, visualization, and curation of the museum’s open collections.
• Hold individual and group DH research training and informational sessions for faculty, staff, and students.
• Help curators and faculty members develop and implement digital projects arising from the museum’s open collections.
• Co-organize a convening with the Clark Art Institute exploring the questions of computation in art history, museums, and collections-based scholarship. Share work with the wider museum and digital humanities communities.
• Co-organize an exhibition based on DH tools and research, in collaboration with curators and faculty.
• Possibly teach one class per semester.
• The Fellow will collaborate with the faculty advisory committee of WCMA Digital

Qualifications

• Applicants must have received a Ph.D. in a humanistic discipline after January 1, 2010, but before beginning the fellowship in July 2018.
• Experience in the use and application of one or more DH methodologies (e.g., visualization, text-mining, text-encoding, GIS, network analysis, database design, digital editions) for creating and transmitting scholarship.
• Ability to work in interdisciplinary humanities environments.
• Demonstrated ability to articulate the opportunities of digital research to scholars in the humanities.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a team environment.

Preferred

• Demonstrated digital project management experience.
• Deep familiarity with museum collection databases, metadata standards, folksonomy projects.
• Knowledge of open scholarship trends, resources, and applications.
• Programming experience.
• Teaching experience at the undergraduate level.