18 Months Fixed Term Contract

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSISTANTS 18 MONTHS FIXED TERM CONTRACT £26,523 PER ANNUM 35 HOURS PER WEEK

The University The University of Buckingham is the UK’s only independent Chartered University and provides undergraduate and postgraduate courses for full time and part time students, and supports an independent and vigorous research agenda. Founded in 1976, the University received its Royal Charter in March 1983 and awarded its first degrees in February 1984.

The University offers an attractive and stimulating environment in which to work. Buckingham is a small focused higher education institution (around 1,000 students) with our key strengths lying in Law and Business. We are fully committed to providing personal, small-group teaching for our students and pride ourselves on delivering one of the best staff- student ratios in British Higher Education. We employ over 200 permanent staff, as well as visiting lecturers. The University’s independence of government funding means that we are not forced to abandon effective traditional methods of teaching for financial reasons.

The University offers excellent opportunities for international connections to our students and we equip our graduates with the knowledge, judgement, and skills they need to succeed as professionals in an international arena. Our culture puts our students first, helping them achieve their full potential in an ideal environment for learning, work and recreation.

Research is valued and encouraged. The University aims to establish an international reputation for academic quality and to develop as a centre for innovative and independent thinking on social and policy issues.

A unique feature of the University is the two-year degree. We teach for four terms a year, with students joining the University in January or July. Obtaining a degree in two years is cited by many students as being the main reason for coming to Buckingham.

A high proportion of our students (around 75%) come from overseas, with up to 80 different nationalities being represented at any one time, creating a strong multicultural mix. Relations between staff and students are excellent and we have an effective alumni network. Many of our students come to Buckingham on personal recommendation from former students.

The University occupies two sites set in attractive surroundings, within easy reach of the historic and picturesque conservation town centre of Buckingham. The campus is not far from the M1 and M40 Motorways and there is a regular coach service direct to Oxford and Cambridge. The Euston-Birmingham main line runs through Milton Keynes, which is about 12 miles away.

Although the University receives no funding from the Funding Councils, staff are eligible for Research Council support, and students may apply for support from the Student Loans Company. Scholarships mean that, even for UK and EU students, it need cost no more to study at Buckingham than at any other British University, having taken account of the saving in living costs offered by the shorter duration of undergraduate degrees. International students can make a significant saving in comparison with the costs at other universities. Background to Dickens Journals Online Notwithstanding his unfortunate quarrel with Lord Lever, Lord Northcliffe of the Daily Mail was probably right when he hailed Charles Dickens as ‘the best magazine editor either of his own, or any other, age’. Between March 1850 and his death in July 1870, Dickens was the self-styled ‘Conductor’ of a 24-page weekly miscellany of crusading journalism, serial fiction, reportage, travel writing, popular science and poetry – some 30 million words of original letterpress – called Household Words, later changed to All the Year Round. As well as writing regular leaders, and contributing some of his best known novels (Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations) Dickens commissioned articles, reviews, and fiction from others, copy-editing their work so that few articles were published without traces of his changes and improvements. More than 380 different writers (around ninety of them women) contributed to Household Words alone. These journals are a compendium of nineteenth- century Britain, a kaleidoscopic view of its vibrant life, filtered through the inimitable Dickensian imagination. Yet the originals have never been republished, and, while not impossible to come by, are languishing in restricted-access research libraries, and are in a decaying state.

Objectives The objectives of Dickens Journals Online (DJO) are to:

 gather together in one place and in a manageable form, both a digital edition of the full content of Dickens’s journals and what scholarship has learned about them in the 140 years since his death.  make this available permanently as a free/open access resource.  integrate all existing information about the authorship of these anonymously- published periodicals, and where authorship has not previously been established to try to do so using a range of techniques.  in the spirit of the originals, enliven the new digital edition in innovative ways designed to open out the resource to the widest possible readership – in secondary, tertiary education, and amongst the general public – but also including (through text- to-speech synthesis and audiofiles) the blind and visually impaired.  develop through collaboration and sharing of materials (including software and scripting) rather than through purchasing/owning resources that potentially duplicate, or force others to duplicate.  launch as complete a resource as possible in time for the Spring 2012 Bicentenary celebrations of Dickens’s birth.

Current Progress Progress towards all these objectives has been made already, catalysed by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship Grant, awarded in 2009 to the Project’s Director. A website hosted at www.djo.org.uk now contains all the core material described above – over 29,900 pages of text – and functions have been built into the site in such a way that non-specialists and researchers can:  Swiftly enrich this material with information about authorship and new attributions, whether existing or freshly researched  Make the material accessible in other ways through coupling it to AV material, annotations, learning journeys, and contextual commentary aimed at different learning levels across the educational spectrum.

The Post: Senior DJO Editor To achieve the enlarged objectives that have come within reach over the last 12 months, Dickens Journals Online wishes to appoint two well-qualified postdoctoral Research Assistants as Senior DJO Editors, to take charge of the development of specific areas of the DJO betasite.

Essential Qualifications/Skills  doctoral dissertation awarded or submitted in an area of some demonstrable relevance to the project (e.g. nineteenth-century periodical studies)  significant experience and understanding of web-based resources  capacity for self-organization and timely completion of routine tasks  willingness to work in a small team  willingness to prepare different kinds of material for publication

Desirable Qualifications/Skills  relevant experience of working on a Digital Humanities project  willingness to travel and ‘present’ in order to disseminate information about the work of DJO (e.g. to conferences, for which the Research Project Grant provides)  familiarity with mark-up languages such as XML, TEI, and RDF  hands on’ approach to using AV editing packages for sound and video materials to enhance contents of DJO

Principal Tasks The core brief will be:  to manage independently the collating and publishing to the site of existing authorship information, and the uploading of already-prepared scholarly commentary, for example head-notes and bibliography relating to individual articles  to draft short biographies of newly-identified authors of articles in All the Year Round, working primarily from the ‘front’ end of the website, which is publicly available (and hence accessible from any workstation)  to make use of a series of bespoke ‘Wizards’ for generating new content and relationships between entities, and carrying out editorial tasks to a high standard of accuracy

Career Development In addition, there will be real opportunities for creative research and career development, in taking forward such tasks as:  researching and writing short biographies for newly identified authors of articles in All the Year Round  working with the Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing (Newcastle University, Australia) on authorship queries  researching and co-writing a tranche of the synoptic volume introductions for publication in different formats  preparing papers on the approach to collaborative authorship evidenced by Dickens’s journals for presenting to an international conference built around the launch of DJO in March 2012, helping edit the proceedings

Transferable Skills/People Skills Other more routine but no less valuable work will involve:  helping configure and implement metadata schema using appropriate markup languages for a limited quantity of data (a pilot scheme)  supervision of aspects of the text correction process (monitoring and approving successful work, and liaising with volunteers)  corresponding with members of the Editorial Advisory Board about the drafts of new material intended for publication to the DJO site.

Selection Process Shortlisted candidates will be invited to a formal panel interview. In addition to a member of the HR team, the panel will consist of:

 Dr John Drew, DJO Project Director  Dr Tony Williams, DJO Co-Director, Research Fellow in the School of Humanities and Associate Editor of The Dickensian  one or more of the other co-applicants to the Research Project Grant: Professor David Paroissien, Professorial Research Fellow in the School of Humanities and Editor of Dickens Quarterly; Dr Cathy Waters, Reader in 19th-Century Studies, University of Kent.  A colleague from another School of the University  One or more specialists/volunteers currently assisting with DJO

The first part of the interview will be a candidate presentation in which interviewees will be expected to outline their interest in and suitability for the role. A laptop/projector with fast internet connection will be available for pre-prepared presentation materials, which candidates may bring on a memory stick. This will be followed by questions from the panel about the presentation, a brief demonstration for the candidates’ benefit of the brief, and a structured interview. Presentations should be no more than 10-15 minutes long.

It is anticipated that interviews will be held on Wednesday 18th May 2011 and Thursday 19th May 2011, for a late June/early July start.

Applications: Applications should be in the following format:  A covering letter giving a statement of not more than 2 sides of A4, setting out how the candidate feels they meet the requirements of the role as set out above.  An up-to-date Curriculum Vitae (including a publications list if appropriate).  A completed summary sheet obtainable from the HR Department, including names of three referees.

Applications should be sent to Mrs Donna Hardman, HR Advisor, The University of Buckingham, Hunter Street, Buckingham, MK18 1EG or electronically to [email protected].

Informal enquiries may be made to Dr John Drew, Senior Lecturer in English Literature on Tel: 01280 828357, Email: [email protected]

The closing date for applications is Thursday 28th April 2011.

Referees: Of the referees, at least one must be from a representative of the candidate’s current or most recent employer and should be able to comment on the candidate’s work; at least one must also be able to speak to the candidate’s academic record and potential. The University will assume that it is free to approach referees unless specifically informed otherwise. The University will normally contact referees for all short-listed applicants prior to interview. Candidates who wish a referee to be approached only when they give their specific permission are asked to state this requirement clearly alongside the name(s) of the referee(s) on the Summary Sheet.

For further information about the University of Buckingham please visit our Web site: www.buckingham.ac.uk