8-week paid internship opportunity in Circuit’s of Practice’s “Digital Atelier”

Over the last year, our international network of cultural organisations and scholars (‘Circuits of Practice’) has been reflecting upon the ways museums narrate computing history.

Our three research ‘Circuits’ have investigated the role of ‘data’, ‘time’ and ‘objects’ within these narratives.

As the project now reaches its synthesising and concluding phase, its team now looks for alternative, challenging, creative ways of understanding and sharing its findings.

The ‘Digital Atelier’ will generate online responses to our three ‘Circuit’ themes within the project.

Each a provocation, an extension, or a realisation to the theories and insights of the ‘Circuits of Practice’ project, each unsettling as much as demonstrating our new understanding of computing history in the museum.

The form of these responses will be the result of conversations and creativity to come, but might include: a piece of digital art; a data visualisation; a rendering of a future imagined computing history exhibit; a beta museum interactive (either for in-person or online); a prototype video game; an enhanced ‘digital edition’ of the project’s written outputs; an online/interactive graphic novel …

An ‘atelier’ is notable in the way that it brings, in proximity, synergy and productivity the talents and actions of creative production. The ideator, the maker, the disseminator producing as an ensemble – noticing and harnessing the energy and opportunity that comes from being together, sharing time and space.

For research the notion of the ‘atelier’ prompts ideas around cross-disciplinary ways of working as well as knowledge exchange – between subjects, across organisations, and through communities of practice.

As such, our ‘Digital Atelier’ will not just provide a crucible for open thinking and new ideation, but it will be a studio orientated to novel and progress forms of research presentation and dissemination, as well as interaction and engagement with audiences.

Crucially, our ‘Digital Atelier’ will be an exercise in promoting more inclusive ways of conducting and sharing academic research – declining the orthodoxy of textual explanation, and embracing the value of outcomes left open, ideas allowed to be nascent, and authorship shared.

The Digital Atelier will be lead by Kimon Keramidas (NYU) and Ross Parry (University of Leicester).

Paid internships will provide opportunities for up to three Research Assistants to take an active and central role in the Atelier, shaping its ideas, and sharing its final outputs.

With recruitment taking place in November 2021, the internship will run from w/b 6 December 2021 through to w/b 27 January 2022 (inclusive).

The internships will require a commitment of up to 11 hours a week, and up to 90 total hours for the whole internship. The internships will be paid at a rate of £16.32 per hour.

As the Atelier will work entirely online, there is not a requirement to be physically on-site at any of the project partner institutions. However, the internship does require the individual to satisfy the requirements of the ‘Right to Work’ criteria as set out by the University of Loughborough.

Essential skills / knowledge for this role:

Capacity to work in a deadline-oriented environment

• Ability to communicate clearly with team members and in presentations
• Experience working with digital media in creative projects
• Experience using digital media in a research setting

Desirable skills / knowledge for this role:

• Interest in history of computing and technology studies
• Interest in museum studies and digital cultural heritage
• Interest in interface design and history of design
• Interest/experience in international collaboration

Expressions of Interest for this role, including a CV and Covering Letter (of now more than two pages), should be sent to ross.parry@leicester no later than midnight (UTC+0/GMT) on Tuesday 23 November.