CLOSED - Research Assistant, Digital Storytelling with Dr. Siobhán McPhee (UBC Geography)

CLOSED – Research Assistant, Digital Storytelling with Dr. Siobhán McPhee (UBC Geography)

Dr. McPhee is hiring a graduate student will skills and interests in digital storytelling for the project Exploring Spatial Empathy: Foregrounding the voices of UBC-V’s custodial staff.

Position Overview: The graduate student will be an integral part of a research project on digital storytelling focusing on spatial empathy. They will work closely with the faculty PI in Geography to gather and share stories from diverse voices, specifically custodial workers, on the UBC-V campus.

Timeline: March to end of July, 2024

Skills/Interests the Graduate Student Should Have:

  • Interest in digital storytelling and using audio/sound as a means to connect to place: A keen interest in exploring geographical concepts around place and place-making and digital storytelling.
  • Technical Skills: Understanding of creating audio recording and editing, and a willingness to learn the technology used to create spatial sound.
  • Research Skills: Experience or interest in conducting interviews and some experience of the process of applying for ethical approval for research projects.
  • Communication Skills: Ability to communicate effectively with a diverse range of individuals.

Skills/Interests the Student Will Gain:

  • Advanced Research Skills: Gain experience in conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews and an oral history research approach adapted to encompass the digital.
  • Technical Proficiency: Develop skills in 3D immersive sound technology creating audio-based artifacts.
  • Professional Network: Opportunity to collaborate with facilities and union professionals at UBC-V.
  • Insight into Spatial Empathy: Deepen understanding of spatial empathy through practical application, contributing to an innovative field of study

Please join the Arts Amplifier for a question-and-answer session with Dr. Siobhán McPhee (UBC Geography). This will be your opportunity to ask questions about the role and learn more before submitting an application.

Q&A with Dr. McPhee, Thursday, February 15, 2024
10:00-11:00 AM PT
Online via Zoom

Applications for the position are due Monday, February 26th. Decisions will be made by the first week of March.

2021 Fall Cohort

This fall the Arts Amplifier is running three collaborative, cohort-based applied research projects. Each project will employ a small team of Arts PhD students who will work with a community partner on a project identified by that partner.

Each student team will meet with their community partner to determine the final approach taken on the project. The students will divide the work according to their expertise and interests, and each person will complete a component of the project. The partner organization, as well as Amplifier staff, will provide ongoing mentorship and support.

Project Descriptions

CityStudio Vancouver

CityStudio Vancouver is looking for one or two small teams of PhD students who will work together to address a research question for the City of Vancouver. Want to be involved in a City of Vancouver project? RSVP for CityStudio's Q&A session.

Eligibility: PhD students in the Faculty of Arts. Open to Canadian citizens, Permanent residents and students with refugee status, and currently awaiting funding confirmation for international students.

The Reach Gallery Museum

The Reach Gallery Museum is looking for up to four bilingual (Punjabi/English) Arts graduate students to work collaboratively with The Reach’s curatorial team to translate selected parts of the Punjabi Patrika newspaper archive. The Reach believes that issues that tend to be racialized in their community (real estate, gang violence, etc.) have been reported on qualitatively differently in English versus Punjabi news media; however, they need support from researchers who can read Gurmukhi script to explore this suspicion and evaluate the content of the archive.

Eligibility: Masters or PhD students in the Faculty of Arts of any citizenship.

Friends for Life

Friends for Life is looking for up to four Arts graduate students to work collaboratively with their leadership team to develop an online resource outlining the history of Friends for Life and its role in the early history of AIDS activism and organizing in Vancouver. This resource will likely be developed through a combination of primary source research, including: reading through transcribed interviews from the "HIV in My Day" oral history project, conducting additional interviews with long-time clients and volunteers, and consulting publicly available documents through the Vancouver archives on AIDS activism and history. They are looking for at least one student with web design and development skills to help with building the online interface.

Eligibility: All PhD students in the Faculty of Arts are eligible to apply for these positions. We have secured funding for Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and those with refugee status to take part in this paid work, and are awaiting confirmation of funding for international students.

Position Details

Number of hours per student: 70 hours, with schedules to be decided between the student teams and their community partner

Compensation: $1800 (less income taxes, EI, CPP, WCB, and +4% vacation pay) as a Graduate Academic Assistant appointment

Remote: TBD with each community partner and students

Eligibility requirements: Active* graduate students (not on leave) in the Faculty of Arts and residing in Canada for the duration of the project. Please see above for more specific eligibility requirements for each project.

Note: These projects are contingent on external funding.

Information Sessions

Stay tuned for future Live Q&As on our events page. If you have questions, please email arts.amplifier@ubc.ca.

Application Details

Applications closed on Thursday, August 19th 2021.

Interview with Fall 2023 CCP: Olivia Brophy and Athena Loredo

As part of our Fall 2023 cohort, we interviewed Athena Loredo (DMA candidate, Composition) and Olivia Brophy (MA Student, Medical Anthropology), for their collaborative cohort project with Dr. Letitia Henville’s academic editing business, Writing Short is Hard.

In this project, they conducted research and interviews with SSHRC merit review committee members to produce a series of informational advice posts for academics navigating grant applications.

Athena Loredo and Olivia Brophy, Writing Short is Hard

As part of our Fall 2023 cohort, we interviewed Athena Loredo (DMA candidate, Composition) and Olivia Brophy (MA Student, Medical Anthropology), for their collaborative cohort project with Dr. Letitia Henville’s academic editing business, Writing Short is Hard.

In this project, they conducted research and interviews with SSHRC merit review committee members to produce a series of informational advice posts for academics navigating grant applications.

March Newsletter: Using grants to plan your next steps

I was chatting with a friend in a PhD program about encouraging more graduate students to apply for non-research grants. She had a couple successful ones under her belt, all won while completing her degree, so she understood the particular challenges students face when breaking into the world of non-research grants while also navigating their academic programs. Eligibility criteria don’t have to look so impossible to students, I was telling her, “Non-academic projects always seem like something ‘out there,’ after grad school, for tenured or established faculty, but what if more students started using these grants now to help them in grad school?”

“This reminds me of backcasting,” she said, “You’ve heard of that term, right?” I hadn’t.

Backcasting

“Backcasting” is a term in decision-making and planning to identify concrete steps towards multiple possible futures. Whereas “forecasting” predicts a future based on trends in the present, backcasting begins with an imagined future, irrespective of current trends. It begins with a goal—“I want an BC Arts Council fellowship,” say—and then works backwards to identify concrete steps to get there within a reasonable timeline. So, when a BC Arts Council fellowship asks for a few publications and strong references, it might involve some of these following actions: attending workshops to develop a project, reaching out to potential mentors, reading craft books or taking courses, investing in art supplies… the more specific one gets in the process of backcasting, the easier it is to envision and assess the likelihood of this future.

Backcasting is one example of the many ways you can approach grants–or other opportunities–in grad school. When you look at a grant application and see eligibility requirements you don’t 100% meet, don’t be too quick to close or click away from that tab. Instead, pull out a piece of paper or a Word document and trace backwards the steps it would take you to get there.

Other strategies

There are other similar strategies you might take when looking at grants. Let’s take a student named Sam, for instance. Sam wants to create a digital storytelling exhibit that features oral stories from neighbourhood. They see a City of Vancouver grant that seems perfect for this project, but the grant is for applications from organizations or institutions, not individual applicants.

This is what Sam might do:

  1. Use the criteria to figure out gaps: If Sam has vague ideas about a digital storytelling exhibit but doesn’t know how to execute the plan, a grant is a great way to start brainstorming next steps. They will need: a community partner, neighbourhood participants, proven digital skills (or a capable team member), permission to collect and catalogue stories, plans for sharing and storing the project, etc. So, this might require creating a plan to network with community members, explore skills-training options, research ethics reviews and other kinds of policies and methodologies for this work.
  2. Break up the project into smaller funding parts: Maybe Sam can put on a small event to celebrate and collect neighbourhood stories. Maybe they can apply to a work-learn position that lets them build a relationship with a relevant community partner while developing skills in digital content creation. Rather than going for the One Big Grant, they can fund their project through multiple small grants to start making themselves more eligible.
  3. Keep an updated project proposal document: Having a project proposal on hand means that Sam can easily respond to upcoming grants or other opportunities. Writing a project proposal involves a necessary process of thinking through abstract ideas and making them more concrete. This is necessary for a grant application, yes, but it can also help clarify the project, which may in turn lead to new ideas or approaches to the work.
  4. Be flexible: Backcasting with a grant can help in figuring out next steps, but that doesn’t mean Sam is committed to any specific grant. The point of backcasting is about initiating action towards an imagined goal. Chances are that once Sam starts taking concrete steps, they’ll also begin to get a clearer, and stronger, sense of one possible iteration of their project.

Even if your idea seems vague and grandiose (“I’d like to publish a book one day,” or “I’d like to make a documentary”), you can start taking steps now while in graduate school. Applying for a grants can be a great exercise in imagining future projects and charting your graduate school pathway.

Need a brainstorming partner? Sign up for a drop-in consultation with our Arts Amplifier team!

February Newsletter: What does “networking” mean to you?

If you type “how to network” into a search engine, you’ll find hundreds of articles (if not thousands—we haven’t looked through them all, admittedly) offering exclusive tips on saying the right things to the right people to make the right career move. Networking, these articles tell us, is a problem that has been solved, a code that has been cracked, a secret solution now available to all (or, in some cases, to those willing to reach behind a paywall).

But, when these articles promise “effective” and “foolproof” methods to make “meaningful” and “genuine” connections, it’s hard not to be a little suspicious.

When you’re in graduate school, networking can appear more nebulous and less clear-cut than the typical career trajectory assumed by these articles. When you’re still building your identity as a researcher, artist, or activist (or all three!), and when you might be considering a few different potential careers after graduation, you may have trouble figuring out who to talk to and where to find them. The more familiar academic networking routes may also not be relevant to all your questions. For example, an academic conference on Shakespeare won’t necessarily be a useful opportunity for the English PhD student wondering about working in policy writing. They might learn more by speaking to someone in another department who writes policy briefs as part of their research practice, or, if they’re lucky, to a fellow Shakespearean who found their way into a policy role–but how do you find such a person?

There isn’t a magic formula to networking in grad school, but at the Arts Amplifier we do think networking is a critical tool to help students chart potential career paths or to imagine expansive research opportunities. Practicing networking in grad school can also be a form of inquiry, a means of building solidarity with like-minded individuals, and a way to cultivate communities of practice, care, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Networking isn’t just about plotting career moves up some imaginary ladder, but about placing yourself in the world, it’s about finding ways to converse and connect that feel meaningful to you.

In your own academic work, chances are you’re already finessing your networking skills. You might be good at making unlikely connections in your research or asking the right questions to dig out new information. These are the kinds of skills that can make you an interesting conversation partner and a memorable connection. And that’s all you need to start building your network: a sense of curiosity, a willingness to approach another person, and the ability to hold a conversation.

While we haven’t read everything on the internet, here are some articles about networking we think are worth checking out:

January Newsletter: Collaboration and Networking for Career Diversity

If once seen as side of desk, collaborative work is urging its way into the core of Arts and Humanities.

In an interview for the Humanities Without Walls podcast, two recently graduated PhDs discussed how pursuing collaborative and interdisciplinary opportunities changed their career pathways (you can listen to the episode or read the transcript). It’s worth listening for the specifics of their projects, but to summarize some of their key points:

  • Eligibility: The tools and skills acquired through their interdisciplinary projects widened their eligibility to teach in departments outside the disciplines of their PhDs, because they could prove they work well in other disciplines.
  • Job security: Having collaborators in both academic and non-profit organizations reduced the stakes of securing a tenure-track job, because the applicant knew they were well-positioned to continue their collaborations and meaningful work in either sector.
  • Networking: Investing in community, collaboration, and networking can lead to unexpected and more meaningful professional opportunities.
  • Funding opportunities: Some granting agencies fund new or small projects that show potential to develop into larger initiatives. In other words, investing in new, small initiatives can result in longer-term collaborations.

Whether or not you’re pursuing a career in academia (or if you don’t know yet), collaboration, networking, and interdisciplinary skills are valuable assets for a career path. Promoting these kinds of pursuits also helps us work towards reimagining humanistic scholarship as less individualistic, more co-creative, and able to integrate those skills and interests that might not otherwise fit within the traditional seminar paper or dissertation.

Interested in collaborative opportunities while in grad school? The Arts Amplifier seeks to support graduate students who want to pursue these collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and professional opportunities to develop skills or experience for crafting a meaningful career path after graduation—whether in academia or elsewhere. Our programming this year covers topics in entrepreneurship, networking, and grants writing.

Interview with Diana Kamau, Women Transforming Cities

Summer 2023 Collaborative Cohort Project

The Arts Amplifier initiative offers Arts graduate students and postdoctoral fellows the unique opportunity to transform ideas into unique and meaningful work experiences.

In Summer 2023, Arts Amplifier hosted its second Collaborative Cohort Project (CCP) with the grassroots organization Women Transforming Cities. We reached out to Community Organizer Diana Kamau to ask her about her experience working with Arts graduate student cohorts.

In Case You Missed It: Entrepreneurship and Arts Graduate Students

From our November 2023 newsletter

On October 24, Arts Amplifier asked a panel of four Vancouver-based entrepreneurs with UBC Arts graduate degrees whether they considered themselves entrepreneurs. They answered “no.”

Over the course of the hour, panelists deconstructed the word “entrepreneur” and its freighted associations with capitalist systems, colonialism, and old narratives of the lone explorer intrepidly staking a claim in a competitive market. But rather than tossing out entrepreneurship altogether, they suggested ways that a humanities degree could help change the narrative.

Moderated by Andrea Lloyd from entrepreneurship@UBC, the panel thoughtfully reflected on using entrepreneurship as a tool for good and carving out a meaningful pathway after the Arts graduate degree.

Topics included:

  • The freighted meaning of the word “entrepreneur”
  • Entrepreneurship and self-employment as “co-creative,” “collaborative,” and “relational”
  • How to launch a social enterprise
  • The power of narrative to frame our career path
  • The advantage of values-aligned, small-scale impact in self-employment
  • How self-employment might help PhDs draw on their unique skills and interests

If you’re interested in learning more about entrepreneurship at Arts Amplifier, join our mailing list for upcoming opportunities.

Join us on December 12 for our info session on our upcoming Amplify Your Product and Service workshop series!

October Newsletter: Entrepreneurship and the Arts Graduate Degree

In a 2021 report, researchers found that only 6% of people with PhDs are self-employed—as compared with 10% nationwide. In her article “The PhD Entrepreneur,” Letitia Henville notes that PhDs tend to choose university jobs at 12 times the rate as self-employment, even when academic jobs consistently decline in availability and security. The reasons might seem obvious: self-employment is risky, entrepreneurship seems better suited to MBAs, and PhDs largely train for academic jobs in universities, not for work in public-facing sectors.

Yet, completing a PhD may prepare graduates for successful self-employment in more ways than we think. Erica Machulak suggests that the PhD, like the entrepreneur, becomes proficient in four core skills for starting a venture:

  1. Articulating a value proposition
  2. Cultivating resilience in the face of uncertainty
  3. Being responsive to market needs
  4. Learning how to learn

The PhD, Machulak concludes, is largely entrepreneurial training. So, given a precarious and uncertain academic job market, why don’t more PhDs see self-employment as a viable option?

One reason, Henville suggests, is that entrepreneurship needs a brand change. The idea of “entrepreneurship” or “start-ups” might deter PhDs who have trained to be skeptical of capitalist or neoliberal systems.

This narrative can change. Rather than see the business sector as antithetical to the humanities degree, what if we look at entrepreneurship as a tool to bring humanities expertise into this sector? What if we view entrepreneurship as a skillset with which to pursue social change or advancement in ways that extend beyond profit-making?

To learn more about entrepreneurship at the Arts Amplifier, check out our resources: