Netgain Challenge

Growing numbers of people with a humanities Ph.D. are seeking employment, and meaningful work, outside of traditional academic positions. Many of them are, or aspire to be, publicly-engaged scholars who want to apply their work to the needs of real people in challenged communities, and who are seeking and experimenting with more mutual, participatory, community-engaged methods of research and interpretation. There are opportunities for grad students or recent grads to receive training in digital tools and apply digital technologies to their work. But these tend to be short-term, poorly-paid, postdoctoral positions -- and there are few opportunities for mid-career academics to re-tool or relaunch their careers in a more digitally-skilled, publicly-engaged direction. Could there be an effort to provide low-cost or no-cost training opportunities and/or more secure, better paid positions for the kind of community-applied, publicly-oriented, digital humanities research and interpretation many of us long to do?