The University
For 50 years, University of Newcastle, Australia (UON) has delivered education to talented students from diverse backgrounds, developing the professional leaders of the future. Critical to its success has been an enduring commitment to equity, excellence and engagement.
UON is a dynamic university, research-intensive and ranked in the top eight nationally for quality of research, with international strengths in the humanities, social sciences and creative industries as well as in chemistry, engineering, mathematics, life sciences, environmental sciences, architecture and many more.
The UON NeW Futures Strategic Plan 2016-2025 recognises that the nature of the workforce will undergo rapid transformation, particularly in Australia, as we move from an economy dependent on commodities to one reliant on new technologies, discovery, innovation and entrepreneurship. Digital Humanities will be a major contributor to the Future Industries Global Innovation Cluster at UON.
The Role
The Professor of Digital Humanities will lead the development of Digital Humanities in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and across the Faculty and wider university.
The role is a leader in research and teaching in the context of new multidisciplinary clusters who can bring staff and students to take advantage of the new opportunities provided by digital resources, tools and communication, and thus enhance the School’s role as a significant contributor globally to innovative teaching and research in humanities and social science.
In particular, this role requires the capacity to encourage undergraduate students to think about disciplinary knowledge and to discuss global issues both past and present through the prism of a range of disciplines. The teaching of the new BA program is driven by question-based pedagogies to embed deep level thinking. The new BA seeks to use the Digital Humanities to ask students to conceive of Humanities learning in a digital age, to re ect on the role of digital technology in their learning, and to understand the world of digital tools and environments for future research and careers.
The incumbent will help shape and develop new forms of education and research in an internationally connected regional location. The University’s digital learning and research facilities make this an incredibly enriching opportunity for the imagined future of students.
The right person will be either “born digital” or has learned how to unleash the power of technology to form a contemporary humanities.
The Professor of Digital Humanities will be a transformative and dynamic leader, able to inspire and start new research programs, as well as build a sustainable record of high quality research that will attract external research income.
A key opportunity to help shape what digital humanities will look like in future at UON, and build on the work of the Centre for 21st Century Humanities (which emerged from the long standing Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing) and developments in smart cities and creative industries at UON and broadly in the region (for more about the latter click here )
Next steps and to apply
To obtain the candidate information package and for a confidential discussion candidates should contact the search firm assisting the University on this campaign: Dr Rosalind De Sailly via email at UON@desailly.com.au
The official close is 9 June
Newcastle – smart happens here
