Japanese Studies Post-doctoral Fellowship

The Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies announces a special post-doctoral fellowship for the 2012-2013 academic year, for a recent PhD in any field of Japanese studies, with extensive expertise in the digital humanities or qualitative digital data management in the social sciences. The fellow will be expected to devote half-time to his or her own research project, and half-time to the management of the Digital Archive of Japan’s 2011 disasters, as described below. Applicants should meet the requirements for the regular post-doctoral fellowship of the Institute and supply the same application materials, with the addition of a separate statement describing the applicant’s skills and experience relevant to working with digital media, and the name of one reference able to comment on these qualifications. The application deadline is March 1, 2012. This will be a 12 month fellowship, commencing on July 1, 2012, and the fellowship amount will be $60,000.

The project manager of the digital archive will be responsible for overseeing the maintenance and development of the Digital Archive of Japan’s 2011 Disasters project. Tasks include working with project developers as well as both Harvard based and outside technology partners to improve the functionality and expand the materials of the archive; help organize and lead workshops and other events to explore potential uses of the archive by researchers; and, in close collaboration with project partners in Japan, work to secure the long-term maintenance of the archive and its necessary infrastructure.

A strong working knowledge of Japanese and English languages is required. While the position will not require any direct coding, candidates for the position must be able to work closely with programmers and designers employing a variety of web technologies and programming languages, be able to understand and evaluate their work, and have the ability to effectively communicate between technical and non-technical project collaborators. An ideal candidate will have had experience designing and hosting websites (including a familiarity with HTML, CSS, and Javascript), maintaining online databases (MySQL or PostgreSQL), some experience coding for the web (PHP or any other web scripting language), experience working with Git code repositories or other version control system, and understand the principles behind the functioning of web APIs.