Methods Fellowships 2023/24

What Methods Fellows bring to CDH Learning

Methods Fellows use their expertise in methods or practices relevant to Digital Humanities research to design and deliver a series of workshop sessions between October 2023 and March 2024.

• Administrative support for all sessions is provided.
• Our programme is largely delivered in person and Methods Fellows need to be available in Cambridge to teach their workshops. 
• Methods Fellows are expected to be active in the growing CDH community.

What CDH offers Methods Fellows

• We offer £1200 for content design, development and delivery of teaching sessions.
• Teaching will typically take the form of a half-day workshop (c. 4 hours in total), delivered in person, complemented by no more than 2 hours of asynchronous support for participants before or after the workshop.
• Content prepared for these sessions should include materials for participants to work through outside the classroom in their own time. We would expect the self-study component of the workshop to take learners around 2 hours to complete.
• The asynchronous teaching could be covered by answering participants’ questions by email on a forum in Moodle or arranging an online drop-in “office hour” or troubleshooting session for software installation problems.
• Opportunities to experiment with novel pedagogical approaches and course content.
• Mentoring and support from Learning Programme staff.
• Networking and peer-learning as part of a supportive community of researchers through our DH Teaching Development forum.

We expect that Methods Fellows will commit 48 hours of their time to work on the Fellowship spread across the year. 

What you need to become a Methods Fellow: 

• Expertise in methods or practices relevant to Digital Humanities research.
• Passion for communicating complex ideas to learners.
• Experience delivering teaching or training (although not necessarily in a formal classroom setting).
• Engagement with DH research and a desire to expand your knowledge of the DH community in Cambridge.

We welcome all subject areas relevant to Digital Humanities, but as examples, other years people have focussed upon:

• Digital ethnography and qualitative research in online spaces.
• Social media analysis.
• Mapping the past: historical GIS.
• Handwritten text recognition.

You can see a list of last year’s Methods Fellows topics here (please select ‘Calendar’ from October 2022 to date and ‘Filter by Type’ to ‘Methods’).

Networking and peer-learning as part of a supportive community of researchers through our DH Teaching Development forum.

CDH welcomes proposals from those who practise coding as part of their research or professional role. You may be based in any department (arts, humanities, social sciences, STEM, libraries etc.) and should have a cross-disciplinary perspective to bring to Digital Humanities. We aspire to connect the often-disparate community of those using technical methods to build support, share knowledge and develop best practices.

In particular, we would like to encourage:

• Teaching and sharing of best practices in coding;
• Networking and mentoring support for those using coding in research.

CDH is committed to expanding opportunities for researchers and staff in research-related roles who use technical methods, and those who might want to move into that type of role in the future. You might think of yourself as primarily a researcher or primarily a coder — or neither of these. Whatever your role, we encourage you to make a proposal for an RSE Methods Fellowship. You will benefit from the same support, community and opportunities as all Methods Fellows.

What RSE Methods Fellows bring to CDH Learning

There are two parts to the teaching and mentoring for the RSE Methods Fellowships:

1. Delivery of one or more workshops in the ‘Best Practices in Coding for Digital Humanities’ series. We would expect the delivery of around 4 hours of teaching and helping to co-write shared teaching materials. Applicants should include a short proposal for content they would like to deliver as part of this programme. 
2. Assistance with around 2 hours of sessions mentoring others with their coding in research. This will take the form of a clinic-style session and/or individual mentoring sessions, as appropriate.

Examples of some ideas for best practices (this is a non-exhaustive list):

• How to get started with particular language environments, techniques or commonly used tools;
• Effective learning habits for coding; collaborating on code; sustainability practices e.g. reproducibility, version control, documentation, testing;
• debugging, automation, packaging, improving performance, core computer science concepts for humanists, publishing code.

These things may be specific to your area of research/expertise or more general practices that you have learned.

What CDH offers RSE Methods Fellows

• We offer £1200 for content design, development and delivery of teaching, co-writing of teaching materials and mentoring sessions.
• Content prepared for these sessions should include materials for participants to work through outside the classroom in their own time. We would expect the self-study component of the workshop to take learners around 2 hours to complete.
• The asynchronous teaching could be covered by answering participants’ questions by email on a forum in Moodle or arranging a drop-in “office hour” or troubleshooting session for software installation problems.
• This will involve working collaboratively with Dr Mary Chester-Kadwell, CDH Lead Research Software Engineer.
• Opportunities to experiment with novel pedagogical approaches and course content.
• Mentoring and support from Learning Programme staff.
• Assistance and advice with DH grant proposals.
• Networking and peer-learning as part of a supportive community through our DH Teaching Development forum.

We expect that Methods Fellows will commit 48 hours of their time to work on the Fellowship spread across the year. 

Please complete the application form, providing up to 250 words on the following sections:

• Content and teaching methods you would be interested in offering.
• Your research experience and interests.
• Why becoming a Methods Fellow at CDH would benefit you.
• Your experience delivering teaching and training to date. This does not have to be in a Higher Education setting and can include informal or peer-to-peer teaching. 

Deadline: CLOSED

Frequently asked questions

I am not sure if ‘Digital Humanities’ is what I do?

The research community at CDH is diverse, spanning the ‘traditional’ humanities disciplines, the social sciences and computer science, and increasingly the biomedical and physical sciences. Previous Methods Fellows have come from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds, including History, Computer Science, Archaeology, Education and Sociology. 

If you are interested in teaching people how to do excellent research in the humanities and social sciences using digital tools and methods, or you want to explore the impact of the digital turn in communication on human culture and society, we’d like to hear from you. 

You can read more about the background of Digital Humanities here.

I am still doing my PhD. Can I apply?

Yes, we are happy to consider applications from PhD students, provided you can demonstrate relevant experience in delivering teaching or training. You will need to obtain a written note from your supervisor confirming they are happy with you taking on this fellowship. 

Which groups of learners should my proposed course be aimed at? Will they be beginners or advanced?

Most of our current programme is aimed at PhD students, post-doctoral and other academic researchers, but other participants have included e.g. librarians, archivists, software developers and communications staff. 

We are keen to expand the depth of our programme, so we will be happy to consider proposals for teaching advanced sessions (provided that there is likely to be a large enough pool of prospective applicants among University staff and students). 

At the application stage, we do not require a very detailed proposal as the course content will be worked out in collaboration with CDH Learning Programme staff.

Do you have a minimum or a maximum number of participants for a course to run?

We do not have a formal minimum attendance. However, we will work with Methods Fellows to identify topics likely to attract at least 10 participants. We aim to run sessions with an attendance of around 15 participants.

I don’t have an academic role at the University. Can I still apply?

We welcome applications from colleagues in academic-related and professional staff roles for Methods Fellowships.

I am employed by a College or the Press and not the University. Can I still apply? 

Yes, you can apply – our definition of the University includes the Colleges and Cambridge University Press and Assessment.

I don’t work for or study at the University of Cambridge. Can I still apply?

Unfortunately, no – Methods Fellows need to be employed by or studying at the University during the academic year in which they will hold the Methods Fellowship.

My contract or course finishes part way through the year, am I still eligible? 

We can offer some flexibility on this provided your contract covers the period when you would be delivering teaching for us (October – March).

What kind of time commitment do you expect from Methods Fellows?

The content delivered by Methods Fellows through our programme is generally the equivalent of 6 hours of live teaching, usually delivered as four hours in the classroom plus a further two hours of supporting participants through asynchronous teaching (e.g. by replying to queries by email on Moodle) and/or ‘office hours’ virtual or in-person drop-in. We calculate the preparation time for these teaching hours on a 7 to 1 ratio in recognition of the time required to develop new courses. This preparation time would include meetings with the Director of CDH Learning or other CDH staff to discuss the content and its relationship to the programme. Methods Fellows are also very welcome to attend other CDH events. We expect that Methods Fellows will commit 48 hours of their time to work on the Fellowship spread across the year.

I have other teaching or work commitments during the period of the Fellowship. Do I need to be available at specific times?

We can be flexible about the timing of your programme content depending on your other commitments. We understand that a Methods Fellowship is usually something that people do on top of another full-time or part-time job. Workshops offered by Methods Fellows generally take place on Monday afternoons, but we are able to consider other time slots. You do need to be available to deliver your workshop or sessions between October 2023 and March 2024. We will not be running sessions in this part of our programme during Easter Term.

How do I know whether you will have access to the software/equipment needed to teach my course?

We encourage proposals for teaching that are not wholly dependent on access to a specific tool or platform but impart the general principles, approaches and concepts underpinning the method in question or that use generally available software.  If you do want to teach using a specific type of software, please consider whether the University already has a licence for using it (check here – requires Raven log-in: https://software.uis.cam.ac.uk/) or if it is free to use (or has low-cost options for personal use and a free trial).

Can you help with finding suitable datasets for teaching purposes?

Yes. We are building up a set of datasets based on the University Library’s digital collections for use in teaching. We can also advise on other teaching datasets sources  (see the Programming Historian and The Carpentries, for example).

I have previously been a CDH Methods Fellow, can I apply?

We are happy to consider reapplications from previous Fellows, however, please bear in mind that your proposal should develop a new course, not deliver one you’ve previously taught for us. Our selection panel will also prioritise proposals from new applicants over re-applications of equal quality in order to ensure that the Methods Fellowship scheme is accessible to a broad community of early-career researchers at the University.

Who will own the teaching materials I produce for CDH Learning Programme courses? 

You will not have to sign away your rights to the teaching materials you produce for us, and you can continue using them in any way you please. However, in alignment with the University’s general policy on intellectual property, we will ask you to either grant CDH a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual licence to retain the credited material for the use of members of the University or to apply an appropriate Creative Commons license which covers this scenario. 

Suppose you want to go down the first route: in that case, this means that you permit us to keep your teaching materials on digital platforms accessible to University members beyond the year when you have taught your course as part of a library of resources for future learners, but the University would not be able to publish online or disseminate more widely, nor ‘remix’ your materials or incorporate into new works without seeking further consent. If you are happy to license your work for broader use beyond the University, we encourage you to use a Creative Commons license of your choice. 

Please read the University’s lecture capture policy here if you wish to create recordings of your lectures or as part of your course materials. In line with this policy, we consider lecture capture as entirely voluntary.

What our current and previous Methods Fellows say about the programme

• ‘Being a Methods Fellow at CDH was a great experience, which gave me valuable opportunities, especially to connect with relevant researchers and to teach a subject that I’m passionate about to a uniquely diverse audience from across the university. CDH was highly supportive throughout the fellowship, providing mentoring, group discussions, and a conference bursary, which helped me focus on my interests and grow as a researcher and lecturer’ – Itamar Shatz, PhD student, Linguistics department.