Doctoral Position in Born-Digital Historical Resources

Doctoral Position for the study of Born-Digital Historical Resources

The University of Waterloo's Department of History is inviting applications for a fully-funded doctoral position (in history) commencing September 2016. Drawing on funds from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, we are looking to recruit a student interested in the historical use of born-digital sources.

The student can pursue their studies in an area of their choosing, in conjunction with expertise found within the graduate program. Ideally, their work will be a combination of traditional historical practices with computational approaches to large repositories of information. They will additionally have the opportunity to work on a researcher use of web archives project, with attendant publishing and travel opportunities. Their major historical field must be chosen from the list available at http://www.triuhistory.ca/phd/field-seminars/, with a digital history field or others of their choosing being available as a minor one.

The student will work with Professor Ian Milligan, principal investigator of the Web Archives for Historical Research group. Milligan is co-author of Exploring Big Historical Data: The Historian's Macroscope, forthcoming later this year, and is also an editor of the Programming Historian. As a member of the Tri-University Graduate Program in History, they will be joining a large cohort of more than 40 domestic and international doctoral students.

The base rate for this position will be $30,000 a year for four years, with a combination of funding from the University of Waterloo as well as from these grants. Opportunities for external funding from federal or provincial granting agencies are also available.

Applicants are encouraged to contact Professor Ian Milligan at i2millig@uwaterloo.ca with an informal expression of interest and a curriculum vitae. Those selected will work with him to build a full application as per our normal admissions procedures. The final decision to admit will continue to rest with the Tri-University Graduate Program in History.

The University of Waterloo is part of the Tri-University Graduate Program in History, which combines the faculty and resources of three of Canada’s premier universities: the University of Waterloo, Wilrid Laurier University, and the University of Guelph. The Tri-University program integrates the scholarship and experience of over sixty graduate faculty, making it one of the biggest graduate history programs in the country. Committees can be compiled from these three departments: Waterloo history,  Laurier history, and Guelph history.

For more information about the University of Waterloo, please visit uwaterloo.ca