Are you interested in the Middle Ages? Are you curious about what manuscripts might say? Would you like to change the world of Chaucerian studies with your perspective? Do you have innovative ideas about medieval studies? Do you want to explore the history of texts?
If you have answered yes to any of those questions, we want to hear from you.
The Canterbury Tales Project has funding for MA and Ph.D. level students. We work on If you Chaucer, Middle English literature, manuscript culture, early print, textual scholarship, Humanities Data or Digital Humanities, but we would also consider other proposals related to the medieval period.
The Canterbury Tales Project is a long-standing digital editorial project with almost 30 years of history leading in the development of editions and innovative methods for textual research and delivery.
In February 2020, the project published the CantApp: General Prologue, which has been downloaded more than 70.000 times since its release. The CTP also defines the cutting edge of textual research: we use an integrated digital editing platform (Textual Communities) and bioinformatics software to study and analyze the textual tradition of the Tales. Although the project’s main aim is to reach a better understanding of the textual tradition of the Canterbury Tales, we also seek to discover and implement better ways of delivering complex information.
The project was recently awarded a five-year $330,000 Insight Grant by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and is associated with several other recently funded projects in Digital Humanities at the University of Lethbridge, the University of Calgary and the University of Saskatchewan. This allows us to offer funding for Ph.D. and MA candidates to work with us at the University of Lethbridge and the possibility of co-supervision arrangements through the University of Calgary and/or the University of Saskatchewan).
What we want:
We seek students interested in researching combined aspects of the Canterbury Tales, manuscript studies, digital research methods, digital humanities and Open Science. You are a curious and enthusiastic research student who will take an active role in the project while carrying out your individual line of research. You want to work as part of a team and contribute to the lab’s research environment. You believe in open science and open data published under FAIR principles.
Your interests might be:
Chaucer
Middle English Literature
Manuscript Culture
Early Printed Books
Textual Scholarship
Open Data
Digital Humanities…
...but we are open to considering other proposals.
We will be particularly interested in discussing ideas beyond traditional textual criticism and attuned to areas of research expanding the canon and conventional views of the text of Chaucer.
What we offer:
We are offering funding for a Ph.D. or M.A. within a lively and diverse working environment. You will learn from peers and project leaders in the framework of the Humanities Innovation Lab, where you can learn about all aspects of the project and its management while sharing in the lab’s collaborative and interdisciplinary research environment. Our project works closely with several other well-funded Digital Humanities and Open Science projects at the University including work on Indigenous languages, Scholarly Communication, and Open Data. The University has a number of innovative cross-disciplinary programmes, including Cultural, Social, and Political Thought (which takes an interdisciplinary approach to problems in the Humanities and Social Sciences) and a new Data Sciences programme, which is developing an approach that will span the Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities.
Lethbridge is a medium-sized city with a mild climate for the Canadian Prairies. It is located on the lands of the Blackfoot confederacy.
Please contact the project director, Barbara Bordalejo, for an informal conversation. The deadline for a January start is October 1st (applications can also be accepted for starts in May or September 2023).
