Digital Scholarship in the Arts (DiSA)
Summer 2025 Digital Scholarship Fellow
UBC CareersOnline Job ID #985672 (1 opening)
UBC Department- Digital Scholarship in the Arts (DiSA)
Hours Per Week – 20
Salary / Wage – $26.02
Preferred Degrees/Disciplines – Computer Science/IT, Library, Archival & Information Studies, Arts/Social Sciences
Additional Documents – Cover Letter
Anticipated Start Date – May 5, 2025
Experience Level – Current Students in an Undergraduate Program, Current Students in a Masters Program, Current Students in a Phd Program
ID – 985672
Supervisor – Christine D’Onofrio
The Digital Scholarship in the Arts (DiSA) initiative is accepting applications for two part-time Digital Scholarship Fellows from students enrolled in a UBC-Vancouver graduate or upper-level undergraduate program. Prospective applicants should have an interest in and basic understanding of Digital Arts Scholarship methodologies or modalities, and comfort with technology/skills to join the team.
Digital Scholarship in Arts (DiSA) is a hub for knowledge exchange, fostering collaboration, and cultivating a community of Arts researchers engaged in digital scholarship. We are a combined initiative started by the Public Humanities Hub, Arts Instructional Support and Information Technology and the UBC Library Research Commons focused on Faculty of Arts research and scholarship using digital methods. DiSA’s primary goal is to support digital arts research and connect Arts researchers to the most relevant and innovative resources for digital arts scholarship.
In their role, the fellows will contribute to fostering, supporting, and amplifying digital scholarship in Arts at UBC. They will offer project support to faculty and graduate students on digital research projects by learning methods and tools, joining workshops, one-on-one and small-group training on digital scholarship skills and/or computational thinking. The fellows will also contribute to data collection about digital scholarship projects in Arts. Reporting to the DiSA Director, these positions will broaden DiSA’s mandate of collaboration, as you will connect with researchers, librarians, students and staff that comprise DiSA’s communities of practice, and be an active part/contributor to the partnership team.
DiSA’s broad understanding of digital integration is open to the candidate’s research areas and interests, therefore please share one or more of your area(s) of interest with us when applying. As a few examples of digital scholarship methods or modalities are; Geographic information Systems (GIS), Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), extended realities AR/VR/MR, podcasting, working with Application Programming Interfaces (API), digitization and/or document intelligence, interactive storytelling, data analytics and/or visualizations, etc.
The Digital Scholarship fellow duties and responsibilities are as follows:
- Help identify appropriate software/computational tools to enable Arts faculty and graduate students to achieve research goals and create a resource inventory
- Provide Arts faculty and graduate students with project-based training on specific tools that will allow researchers to produce new projects and scholarship more easily/more quickly
- Learn new digital scholarship tools, methods, and practices onsite with other fellows, students, and faculty
- Participate in the development, design, and delivery of showcases of Digital Scholarship projects in Arts
- Develop and maintain Digital Scholarship resources on the DiSA website
- Work on special projects in support of the Digital Scholarship portfolio
- Foster a welcoming, research-driven, interdisciplinary learning environment for graduate students and faculty in the Faculty of Arts
- Other related duties as required
Qualifications
Preferred candidates will have an interest and some basic experience with digital humanities, computational, and/or digital arts technologies, tools and software. It is important that applicants are organized, practice good time management and have initiative as much of the work is independent and will be completed in a hybrid environment (combination of in-person and remote). Candidates should be an upper-level undergraduate or graduate student in Arts disciplines. It is expected that students will learn new tools and technologies on the job, so students should possess a willingness and openness to learn and experiment with new technologies, tools, and methods.
- Currently enrolled in a UBC-Vancouver Graduate or Undergraduate Program
- Familiarity with and interest in digital scholarship methodologies and disciplines
- Familiarity with the UBC systems and online resources
- Some experience with Digital Scholarship methods, which could include work in the Digital Humanities
Contributions to University Community & Student Learning Components (UBC Vancouver Work Learn Program)
Candidates will be exposed to best practices in digital arts scholarship. While there is much independent work, the student will be supported by a flexible and open supervisor who has vast experience in digital scholarship and is always available to assist, share resources, give advice, tips and answer questions and will be given feedback about process along the way. The student will also work in a team of other students with varying and differing types of digital arts and humanities expertise who can and will offer feedback and guidance. By the end of the project, the incumbent will have developed and/or improved upon existing skills and tools in computational methods, project management, and interdisciplinary collaboration that can enhance their professional portfolio for future post-baccalaureate and/or job applications. Students will gain and/or refine professional skills in time management, interpersonal communication, and experience working in a team-oriented environment as well as practiced experience leveraging resources, stakeholders, corresponding with students and networking with the UBC community.
A positive, encouraging working environment will help students develop personal and professional skills, abilities and competencies. Through their work, students will:
- Gain experience working with researchers in a variety of Arts disciplines
- Learn about cutting-edge Arts research methods and modalities that utilize computational tools
- Refine and improve teaching skills to complement course learning (e.g. delivering workshops and presentations and communicating complex concepts to an audience of researchers across diverse disciplines)
- Refine, improve, and expand existing knowledge of computational tools used in digital scholarship and in technological sectors.
- Develop transferable skills in designing, developing and delivering workshops that will enhance career outcomes in both traditional academic and alt-academic careers
- Develop skills in providing individual consultations
- Improve their data analysis software skills, which could transfer to the analysis of their own research data
- Enhance intercultural and interdisciplinary communication skills and awareness
- Gain experience working both independently and in a diverse, team-based environment
- Develop transferable technology skills using a variety of digital tools and resources, computational software and hardware.