Recommendations

Tanya Clement

May 11, 2011

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 The following recommended career paths or roles are intended for those digital humanists who are interested in forging their own places in academic institutions as well as for those who are hiring people with advanced humanities degrees to do digital humanities. It should be noted that most job titles in universities are determined by the university rather than the digital humanities center. With this in mind, we hope that the paths we are suggesting represent not so much an answer, but a mindset about assessment and promotion within the context of intellectual work and professional citizenship that can be articulated in different ways according to local circumstances.

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1. Research faculty: Following the model of the sciences and many universities in the United Kingdom, centers could create “research faculties” eligible for all of the opportunities afforded teaching faculty (internal fellowships, sabbatical, and 9-month appointments) but with no expectation to teach regularly. It should be noted that “Research faculty” in most U.S. universities are commonly faculty hired and paid through grants or other soft money and primarily attached to a grant team.  For teaching positions that are not tenure track, the job titles are often “Lecturer” or “Professor of Practice.”

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1. Tenure-track scholars: This is a position in a department as tenure home with a focus on working in digital humanities as main research area, with memoranda of understanding between the center and the department. We acknowledge that there are problems with this model that are outside of the scope of these recommendations.

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1. Library faculty: Many university libraries already have structures for evaluating non-traditional and collaborative scholarly work that resemble that produced by digital humanities centers. Indeed, many centers are now administratively located in university libraries, and so for some centers this may be the best option. At the same time, “Library faculty” is a slippery term.  About a third of library faculty are tenure-track faculty (as recommended by the Association of College and Research Libraries); others are on faculty equivalency continuous appointments based on a step system for promotion; others are not considered faculty at all.

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1. Research active status: In order to better delineate modes of assessment in the above positions, we are suggesting that DH centers employ “research active status“. in their plans for assessment and promotion. Research-active digital humanists will demonstrate scholarly activity in various ways according to the intellectual work and professional citizenship model. Collaborative work means that this will be determined by collaborative, possibly co-authored, publications to which they make serious intellectual contributions. Some employees may not wish to be research active, but there should be opportunities or possibilities for becoming research-active available in a digital humanities center. The local, institutional conditions determining classification for the employee as “research active” should be defined at the time of hiring.