Summer Research Fellowship in Multidisciplinary Training in Digital Methods

Rini B. Mehta
Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities
in partnership with
Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH)
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)

Description:

Applications are invited for a Summer Research Fellowship in Multidisciplinary Training in Digital Methods to be held VIRTUALLY at the National Center for Supercomputing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in June 2020. This summer workshop will train fifteen graduate students in foundational analytic and technical skills in digital methods and digital humanities, broadly conceived.  It also will serve as a test-site for developing a sustainable on-campus program for multidisciplinary training in digital methods in addition to providing the foundational work for future grant applications. The research done this summer will contribute to an ongoing research project on Global Film History, funded by the University of Illinois Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities.

How it works now (update due to the COVID-19 emergency):  

Graduate students across various campus disciplines will be selected for working on projects at the intersection of media studies, literary studies, and data visualization.  Each student will work with a faculty supervisor and possibly with one other graduate student. Our goal is to team one student from the Humanities and Social Sciences and one graduate student from a Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or Fine and Applied Arts to work on a well-defined project or problem related to a dataset from the Global Film History project.  Teams are responsible for producing research results that will be rigorously documented for future use.  In addition, research teams will collaborate with faculty director(s) to produce a final paper publication.  The subject, dataset, and research teams will be decided in late May.

Successful applicants will meet with the faculty director during the week of May 11th to discuss the project and prepare for the June workshop. Our original plan was holding a weeklong on-campus workshop to be held at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications from June 8-12, 2020. Since we cannot meet in person and work in teams in the same room 8 hours each day, we are extending the collaboration to spread over the month of June. The active collaboration will begin on June 8, by which time the fellows will be given a schedule for Zoom meetings etc. Following the workshop, researchers will continue to work on the project until the result/paper is ready to be released/published.

Application:

Please send (a) your current CV, (b) students from non-technical backgrounds will submit a statement of 1,000 words detailing experience and interest in global film histories, and coding and/or data visualization. (c) students from technical backgrounds will detail their interest in digital humanities and provide a sample of any previous coding/visualization/data-curating you have done. Send the material as attachments to rbhttchr@illinois.edu, with ‘2020 Summer Workshop’ as the subject line.

Stipend:

Summer Research Fellows will receive a $1,000 stipend for their participation. Fellows are required to attend all Zoom meetings (announced later) and commit to completing their projects to receive remuneration.

Timeline:

Completed applications must be submitted to Dr. Rini B. Mehta at rbhttchr@illinois.edu by Monday , May 4, 2020.  Shortlisted candidates may be contacted for a Zoom interview between May 5 and 10. The final selections of candidates will be released by May 15, 2020.

If you have additional questions about the application process, please contact Dr. Rini Mehta at rbhttchr@illinois.edu.