About

The Methods Fellowship programme offers teaching, research and professional staff, and postgraduate students at the University of Cambridge the opportunity to develop and deliver innovative teaching in digital methods. They contribute to an interdisciplinary programme that attracts over 500 participants across the University each year. 

The Methods Fellowships will be of particular interest to early-career researchers interested in translating their knowledge and expertise of digital methods into teaching formats. CDH also welcomes applications from professional staff and PhD students.

Methods Fellows benefit from mentoring by CDH Learning staff and are an integral part of the wider CDH community, accessing a vibrant network of researchers and spanning a wide range of disciplines and departments. 

The call for applications is now closed for this academic year. Please click on each heading (or tab above) to view more detail.

General Methods Fellows, to design and deliver a series of DH focussed workshop sessions.

Research Software Engineer Methods Fellows, for those who practice coding or any kind of software development as part of their research or professional role.

Archive of Tomorrow Methods Fellows, to carry out a small-scale project which explores health-related information, including the Covid-19 pandemic.

How to apply and FAQs

General MF

What Methods Fellows bring to CDH Learning

  • Methods Fellows use their expertise in methods or practices relevant to DH research to design and deliver a series of workshop sessions between October 2022 and March 2023. Administrative support for all sessions is provided. We expect that most Methods Fellows’ workshops in 2022/2023 will be taught in person; however, we are also happy to accept proposals for online teaching.
  • Methods Fellows are expected to be active in the growing CDH community. 

What CDH offers Methods Fellows

  • An honorarium of £1200 for content design, development and delivery of teaching sessions.
    • For in-person workshops, we would expect this to typically cover four hours of live teaching plus content preparation and up to two hours of asynchronous teaching or drop-in ‘office hours’. Teaching will typically take the form of a half-day workshop, but various formats are possible – for example, two sessions of 2 hours. 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. Drop-in office hours may be held in person or online. 
    • Workshops may be offered online only with the same number of teaching hours spread over at least two teaching sessions.
  • Opportunities to experiment with novel pedagogical approaches and course content.
  • Mentoring and support from Learning Programme staff.
  • Opportunities to apply for all CDH awards for the academic year 2022/23.
  • Assistance and advice with DH grant proposals.
  • Networking and peer-learning as part of a supportive community of researchers through our DH Teaching Development forum.

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, 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 January 2022 to date and ‘Filter by Type’ to ‘Methods’).

RSE MF

CDH welcomes proposals from those who practice coding or any kind of software development as part of their research or professional role. You may be based in any department (including STEM) 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:

  • Networking and peer-to-peer support for those using coding or developing software;
  • Teaching and sharing best practices in coding, advanced techniques, software sustainability and tools.

CDH is committed to expanding opportunities for researchers and staff in technical research roles and those who might want to move into that type of role in the future. You might think of yourself as a Research Associate/Assistant, Research Software Engineer or Research Technical Professional — or none 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.

CDH will provide:

  • An honorarium of £1200 for content design, development and delivery of teaching sessions.
    • For in-person workshops, we would expect this to typically cover four hours of live teaching plus content preparation and up to two hours asynchronous teaching or drop-in ‘office hours’. Teaching will normally take the form of a half-day workshop, but various formats are possible – for example, two sessions of 2 hours. 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. Drop-in office hours may be held in person or online. 
    • Workshops may be offered online only with the same number of teaching hours spread over at least two teaching sessions.
  • Opportunities to experiment with novel pedagogical approaches and course content.
  • Mentoring and support from Learning Programme staff.
  • Opportunities to apply for all CDH awards for the academic year 2022/23.
  • Assistance and advice with DH grant proposals.
  • Networking and peer-learning as part of a supportive community of researchers through our DH Teaching Development forum.

Archive of Tomorrow MF

CDH are funding two AoT Methods Fellowships and invites proposals from researchers interested in collaborating with us to develop a small-scale project which explores this content and promotes further use of the UKWA through documenting a short case study showcasing how they have integrated content from the AoT collection, or other web archives of health-related information, into their research. We welcome applications from people with digital humanities specialisms but also from researchers in sociology, media studies and health studies.

AoT Methods Fellows will:

  • Carry out a small-scale research project exploring the AoT collection of archived websites, metadata, and derived data relating to health information of multiple kinds, official and unofficial. Fellows’ projects may also explore other health-related materials already in the UK Web Archive or health-related materials in other web archives (such as the Internet Archive or the UK Government Web Archive).
  • Take part in the AoT autumn workshop on 6th October 2022
  • Present their findings at a workshop organised by Cambridge Digital Humanities in Spring 2023.
  • Write up a 1500-word public report documenting their project and the methods used to carry it out for the AoT website.

Methods Fellows will be encouraged to collaborate with the AoT project team, including the technical experts who are engaged in archiving websites, creating metadata, and developing tools to support the use of the collection. Findings from undertaking the fellowship will be used in the final report for the project.

Fellowship proposals may use computational methods to explore and analyse the AoT collection metadata and derived datasets and the content of other web archives comprising health-related content (such as the Internet Archive or the UK Government Web Archive). These could include network analysis, topic modelling, hyperlink analysis or forms of distant reading web archival content. However, we also welcome proposals from researchers using qualitative methods and close reading techniques to investigate the AoT collection content. Fellowships will be supported by our team of Research Software Engineers and web archivists to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration.

Archive of Tomorrow and CDH will provide Methods Fellows with:

  • A bursary of £700 to prepare and deliver the workshop presentation and write the report for the website.
  • Access to five hours of Research Software Engineer (RSE) support and web archivist expert advice to co-develop the fellowship project.
  • Mentoring through the CDH Learning Programme
  • Support for Digital Humanities project development and grant-writing as members of the CDH research community

About AoT

Funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Archive of Tomorrow (AoT) is archiving health-related information, including about the Covid-19 pandemic, published online and investigating challenges of how information is disseminated and communicated.

Alongside the National Library of Scotland, project partners include Cambridge University Library, Edinburgh University Library and Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, with key roles based at all institutions that will form a network of expertise and investigation. The British Library plays a key supporting role.

The AoT collection offers rich sources of data to investigate questions relating to gender and health information, intersectional issues and health information, trust and mistrust, global versus local frames and official versus informal expertise. It is part of the UK Web Archive (UKWA) which collects and preserves millions of websites annually under the UK’s legal deposit legislation.

Apply / FAQs

The call for applications is now closed for this academic 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: 11 September 2022. The call is closed for this academic year.

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.

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 CUP. 

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 (whether virtually or in person), 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.

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.

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).

Which platforms are you using to deliver remote teaching currently?

During the University closure, we reformatted the Learning Programme for remote delivery, using a combination of video delivery using Zoom and self-guided materials hosted on Moodle for participants to work through between sessions. We also used Google Drive to facilitate participant access to large datasets or collaboration tools for teaching. 

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 MF scheme is accessible to a broad community of early career researchers at the University.

Who will own any online learning content 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.

 

Dr Anne Alexander

Dr Anne Alexander

Senior Research Associate; Learning Director

Karen Herbane

Karen Herbane

Learning and Events Coordinator

Cambridge Digital Humanities

Tel: +44 1223 766886
Email enquiries@crassh.cam.ac.uk