9

I'm a computer science post doc and recently saw a tenure-track faculty posting in a humanities department, looking for someone with a computer science background to join their team. This position aligns really well with my research, but I'm a bit apprehensive of going to a department that I have little background in. While the group I would be joining has stuff I'm doing, the other faculty in the department are in a totally different field. All the PhD and Master's students are from this humanities department, which makes me wonder how I would recruit my own students, and what kind of venues I would be potentially publishing in since I'm not from the same background as everyone else in the department.

I will still apply because it seems interesting, but I wanted to get some opinions from people about what to consider in the application materials, questions to ask if I got invited to an interview, and other things to consider if I were to be lucky enough and offered a position.

Improve this question
9
  • 4
    It seems unlikely to me that a humanities department is able to offer a competitive salary and work conditions relative to CS departments, just something to think about.
    – user176372
    Commented Dec 4 at 19:01
  • 2
    "what kind of venues I would be potentially publishing in" - Presumably, as a tenure-track faculty member you'd be expected to run your own independent research program which would include choosing appropriate venues to publish in yourself, no? Why are you thinking the department has a role in that? I do think it would be worth having a conversation about tenure expectations, though, to get some idea of whether you're on the same page about what it means to be productive for someone doing the sort of work you do compared to what others in the department may be familiar with.
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented Dec 4 at 19:14
  • 2
    What would they expect you to teach? What happens in N years time when the department profile has evolved, fashions have changed, and a new Dean is in post? Are you going to find yourself assigned to teach 20 lectures on "Ptolemy: geography, culture and identity in the ancient world" and if so, how do you feel about that prospect?
    – avid
    Commented Dec 4 at 21:09
  • 3
    @BryanKrause on 'venue', the thing that would concern me is if they rated my work by their standards not ones relevant to CS. eg if they expect faculty to publish books and monographs but CS people publish in conferences, there may be a mismatch. It's worth having that conversation with them to clarify expectations.
    – user1908704
    Commented Dec 5 at 10:15
  • 5
    I think you could improve the title to make it more informative. Something like "Computer science postdoc starting a faculty position in a humanities department". The mere fact that you are going to another department (e.g. CS to CS or humanities to humanities) is absolutely nothing special. What makes it special is that you go from CS to humanities.
    – Richard Hardy
    Commented Dec 5 at 11:18

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
7

It is probably worth the effort to apply in today's marketplace. While it seems unusual (and is), it might be that the department has some long term goal to get more "computational" in general. You can explore that in any discussions. If that is the case, then you might actually have a good path to tenure, guiding others. Nothing is guaranteed about that, of course, but it might be worth the effort to explore it.

In discussion, be sure to explore the likelihood of obtaining tenure and what the department can/will do to make it possible. If my guess about possibilities, above, is correct, it might be relatively straightforward to build a team, though a focused one.

You can also explore the "venue" question with them, though I'd guess that it would be in applied areas. That could include applied CS areas as well as computational "field" areas.

Expect, however, to have a need, stated or otherwise, probably stated, to learn about that specific field going forward. If that isn't interesting to you at all (and you have other options) then probably not worth pursuing. But if it is interesting then it could be a good move. I once (as a mathematician) worked with a geographer, though we didn't get very far. But there was some synergy.

Improve this answer
2

My concern would be that the career of a computer scientist is quite different from the career of a Humanities prof. Where would you get your mentoring.

Can't hurt to apply and check it out, but maybe you could go into how you could make this a viable situation for yourself. Maybe discuss the possibility of a secondary appointment right from the start, for example.

Improve this answer
2
  • 2
    Exploring the idea of a joint appointment is a good idea. My own advisor, a mathematician, held a joint appointment in computer science (the discipline specified on my Ph.D. sheepskin). I admit that math would conventionally be considered closer to CS than a humanities field might be, but this is 2024 and maybe people are more forward-thinking.
    – Paul Tanenbaum
    Commented Dec 6 at 14:00
  • 1
    @PaulTanenbaum -- yeah, it's not hard to credit the humanities department with forward thinking here. Hopefully, they have a plan that would keep a CS person's career thriving from within their own department, if that's the path they're running down, but "trust, but verify" holds.
    – Scott Seidman
    Commented Dec 6 at 16:11
1

You say that this position aligns very well with your research. If that’s so, then it shouldn’t be a whole lot easier to attract your own students if you were in a CS department. Many schools are truly seeing the benefits of interdisciplinary research (and equivalently, acknowledging the fairly arbitrary and restrictive nature of the boundaries between disciplines).

If it is within your capabilities to play a role in fostering this interdisciplinary activity, then perhaps you should affirmatively adopt it as an explicit part of your value proposition. And you could reach out to CS colleagues (and their students) from such a humanities post anyway. If your work is interesting enough, then such an invitation to collaborate should strike at least some of them as quite appealing.

Improve this answer
0

In some ways this sounds quite exciting. In particular, if your interests lie in applications of your computer science expertise, then it could be a really good opportunity of "pre-made" collaboration.

However, it could also leave you quite isolated, as the only person doing what you do in a community that doesn't understand your methods, your field, your publishing venues or conferences, etc - so you would need to be very self-reliant. If taking this further I'd recommend looking for ways to mitigate this factor, e.g. a joint appointment (as others have mentioned) or less formally making contact with the CS department to ask if you would be welcome to get involved in their community.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .