We are looking for a Digital Archivist for the research project Re-Presenting Europe: Popular Representations of Diversity and Belonging. This project, which is funded by the Dutch Research Agenda, focuses on positive examples of diversity and belonging in society and examines how they contribute to a sense of belonging across various minority communities in Europe. As a project team we examine popular sports like football and baseball, as well as representations in art and culture with a focus on hip-hop.

The project emphasizes “community curation,” in which members of the general public collect, share, and interpret the histories of their own families and communities. In its next phase, we aim to incorporate institutional archival collections into the digital archive, as well as to create an interpretive framework for materials we are given from our communities.

As a key member of our team, working across different subprojects, you will facilitate both the research and presentation of our work. An exciting aspect of the job is the opportunity to work with researchers and social partners to build audiovisual and textual collections that focus on sports, hip-hop, and urban arts. These include a hip-hop archive and a digital archive of sports heroes with a migration background, in particular from the Antilles.

Your responsibilities include co-developing strategies and techniques to locate, collect and organize relevant source materials and research data from both communities and from existing databases, alongside researchers and community members. You will lead the team in designing an archival structure for this and reflecting on how to do this in collaboration with those represented in the archive. You will ensure that the collections collected from the project are organized in a practically feasible and sustainable manner and are made accessible to the public and researchers. And, as indicated above, you will be a member of a team that works in close connection and dialogue with the social partners, researchers, and participants from the world of hip-hop, urban arts, and sports. You report to the project leader and ensure clear and compelling communication with the parties involved within and outside the project.

The tasks of this role include (but are not limited to):

• developing strategies and techniques to identify, collect, and organize relevant source and archival materials in collaboration with researchers and social partners;
• assisting in gathering such materials, organizing, preserving and presenting them;
• developing a vision and a plan for translating digital and physical material collections into a concrete and practically feasible archive form;
• co-developing a sustainable form of access for these collections, such as in a hip-hop archive and a sports hall of fame;
• developing publicly accessible forms of presentation such as virtual exhibitions, interactive databases or serious games.

We are looking for candidates with multiple of the following qualifications and experiences:

• a professional background at a minimum university of applied sciences level in digital humanities, archival or information sciences, or comparable;
• experience in working with digital archiving techniques and systems, and/or developing digital research infrastructure;
• experience with relevant software, such as BitCurator, ContentDM, Rosetta, Preservica, Archive-It, Archivematica, or ArchivesSpace;
• knowledge of digital archiving, metadata standards and systems, and familiarity with conventions, architecture and metadata structure used by established heritage institutions (e.g. Library of Congress, Gallica, and Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, and Europeana);
• a personal familiarity with and connection with sports and/or hip-hop and urban arts is desirable;
• a good verbal and written command of the Dutch and English language (Papiamento is a bonus);
• analytical and problem-solving skills; communication skills and a focus on cooperation.

We offer:

• a position (0.5 FTE) for one year in an international working environment. After positive evaluation, this can be extended with 24 months (3 years total).
• a full-time gross salary between €3,226 and €4,494 in scale 10 of the Collective Labour Agreement Dutch Universities (CAO);
• 8% holiday bonus and 8.3% end-of-year bonus;
• a pension scheme, partially paid parental leave, and flexible employment conditions based on the Collective Labour Agreement Dutch Universities.

In addition to the employment conditions from the CAO for Dutch Universities, Utrecht University has a number of its own arrangements. These include agreements on professional development, leave arrangements, sports and cultural schemes and you get discounts on software and other IT products. We also give you the opportunity to expand your terms of employment through the Employment Conditions Selection Model. This is how we encourage you to grow. For more information, please visit working at Utrecht University.

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