Working/Functional Title
Predoctoral Fellowship
Position Summary
This fellowship award provides access to Michigan State University’s outstanding library, computing facilities, and digital repositories, mentorship from Dr. Sarah Bruno and other Mellon-funded Afro-Puerto Rican lab Taller Entre Aguas (TEA) members. This predoctoral fellowship is a fixed-term appointment and welcomes applicants eager to expand their skill set in digital humanities and public-facing and community-engaged work. Applicants may be pursuing a PhD in the interpretative social sciences or the humanities at any institution (the applicants need not be enrolled at Michigan State University). Applicants must be finished with all doctoral work except the dissertation, actively working in Puerto Rican Studies, Black Studies, or Caribbean Studies, and committed to a career producing scholarship in one or more of those fields.
The successful applicant will focus most of their time on their field research, archival research, or writing. The rest of their duties will involve attending all virtual TEA team meetings and assisting with logistics and promotion for the Taller Entre Aguas Summer 2026 field school opportunity. They will be required to participate in the 2026 field school (at no cost to themselves). The predoctoral fellow and Dr. Bruno will meet at a frequency determined by them both but, at the very least, will be a bi-weekly schedule to establish and ensure their scholarly productivity during their fellowship year. The fellow does not need to be in residence for this fellowship. The fellowship year begins in July and is for a 12- or 9-month appointment, with the stipend being $40,000.
Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, citizenship, age, disability or protected veteran status.
Required Degree
Masters
Minimum Requirements
- Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the US on a full-time basis, enrolled in a PhD program in the humanities or social sciences at an accredited graduate or professional school.
- Candidates must have passed any PhD qualifying examinations and be in an advanced stage of research and writing on an approved dissertation topic.
Required Application Materials
- Statement of Alignment and Interest (speaking to how your research interests align with the TEA mission and grant activities; cover letter); 2 pages maximum, single-spaced.
- Project Narrative; 3 pages maximum
- Timeline; 1 page
- 1-page summary of your philosophy of diversity, equity, and inclusion as it pertains to intellectual leadership in the areas of teaching/curriculum development, research/creative activities, service, outreach, advising, and/or administration. The statement should also include an explanation of related past or planned activities/endeavors as well as how the candidate will advance our goals of inclusive excellence. For more about MSU’s DEI efforts, see https://inclusion.msu.edu/. For more information about writing diversity statements, see https://cal.msu.edu/documents/cal-guidelines-for-the-writing-of-diversity-statements/
- CV
- Graduate transcripts
- Letter of Rec (from advisor or mentor who can speak to their project and ability to carry out their timeline of scholarly productivity); sent directly to Dr. Sarah Bruno at brunosar@msu.edu
Special Instructions
Review of applications will begin June 6, 2025 and will continue until the position is filled. Applications must be submitted electronically to the Michigan State University Human Resources website http://careers.msu.edu. Posting number 1032937.
For more information, contact Sarah Bruno, Chair of the Search Committee at brunosar@msu.edu .
Persons with disabilities have the right to request and receive reasonable accommodation.
Review of Applications Begins On
06/06/2025
Remote Work Statement
MSU strives to provide a flexible work environment and this position has been designated as remote-friendly. Remote-friendly means some or all of the duties can be performed remotely as mutually agreed upon.
Department Statement
The College of Arts & Letters recognizes that only an academic and organizational culture, which actively seeks out and strengthens diverse voices and perspectives among its members results in true excellence. We are an equal opportunity employer. The College of Arts & Letters is particularly interested in candidates of all backgrounds who are committed to the principle that intellectual leadership is achieved through open access and pro-active inclusion. We particularly welcome applications from women, people of color, LGBTQI individuals, and others who are traditionally underrepresented in the academy.
More about Taller Entre Aguas
Taller Entre Aguas (TEA) is a digital humanities lab and project that is expanding the ways Puerto Ricans gather and think together, building a theorization of “Black Puerto Rican data,” and creating communities of knowledge around Caribbean and Black DH methods. TEA began as a micro lab within the Dr. Jessica Johnson’s Community Knowledge Lab (CKL) under the umbrella of the Mellon-funded Diaspora Solidarities Lab and was seeded out at the end of 2024.
We are interested in immersing ourselves in Black digital humanities and Caribbean digital practices and priorities. TEA originally consisted of three main projects: The Registro Project, the Criadas Project, and the Libertos Project. TEA, headed by Dr. Sarah Bruno, is a curated transnational team of junior scholars deeply invested in ancestral reverence. Although the projects deal with different data and subject matter, the 1872 Slave Registry, census records, and police records, along with manumission materials and miscellaneous archival documents regarding the process of emancipation, respectively, these projects are channeled together by their shared preoccupation with the re-presentation, accessibility, and scholarly inquiry of data. We are concerned with the Black lives we input into our spreadsheets. It is for and with the (Afro)Puerto Rican community that continues to show up to our events and generate conversations, the elders, the students, and the independent genealogists, that Taller Entre Aguas continues to code digital memory in the form of spreadsheets and websites from cold paper, sterilized and sanitized by colonial ledger keepers.
During this next phase of Taller Entre Aguas, lab members will continue working on and completing the Registro Project and Libertos Project. The successful predoctoral applicant will assist the TEA team with planning logistics for a Summer Field School that will focus on creating a digital component for the PROPA (Puerto Rican Organization for the Performing Arts) Lugares Históricos project.
The Summer Field School will be open to academic and non-academic participants (about 20 total). It will teach digital humanities skills so that we can collaboratively create an online map of each historical site with the accompanying oral histories, transcriptions, and photographs, as well as travel to the sites to place the QR code that visitors can scan to lead them to the website as well as learn about other historical sites in the PROPA Lugares Históricos network. The Summer Field School will be two weeks; lodging, food, travel, and a modest stipend will be provided for each participant.
MSU Statement
Michigan State University has been advancing the common good with uncommon will for more than 160 years. One of the top research universities in the world, MSU pushes the boundaries of discovery and forges enduring partnerships to solve the most pressing global challenges while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.
