The Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki invites applications for the position of

UNIVERSITY LECTURER IN DIGITAL HUMANITIES

for a permanent appointment starting on 1.12.2026, or as agreed.

The position is based in the Department of Digital Humanities and is closely connected to the interdisciplinary Master’s Programme in Linguistic Diversity and Digital Humanities (LingDig), particularly its Digital Humanities study track. Working with other Digital Humanities staff, the appointee will develop both the DH curriculum and teaching in digital and computational methods for the Faculty of Arts more broadly. An increasingly important part of the role will be to engage students across disciplines, create meaningful pathways into computational work, and develop teaching in dialogue with them.

The Department offers an internationally connected environment for research and teaching. It contributes to the FIN-CLARIAH research infrastructure and DARIAH-FI, organises the Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon, and collaborates with research projects, language technology, CSC, and GLAM organisations. The University Lecturer will collaborate across the Department’s research groups. This may draw, among other areas, on research in computational history and work with large-scale textual, bibliographic, and cultural heritage data using AI, high-performance computing, and multimodal methods. The appointee will bring methods, infrastructures, validation practices, and project experience from these and other projects into technically ambitious teaching and student projects.

We are seeking a strongly teaching-oriented candidate with a demonstrated record of high-quality research-based teaching, curriculum development, and the creative design of new learning environments. Candidates may come from digital humanities or from another relevant humanities, social science, information, or computational field. What matters is the ability to bring their expertise convincingly into a digital humanities teaching environment and to develop technically demanding teaching in computational and AI methods for humanities contexts.

This is a future-facing appointment. Strong foundational computational literacy—including programming, data handling, quantitative methods, and confident research use of Python, R, Git, and Jupyter—is a baseline for the appointee, not the position’s principal teaching focus. This is not a position centred on standalone introductory courses in Python or R. Its defining task is to renew how programming and computational practice are taught as agentic coding rapidly changes how computational research is conducted and taught.

As AI agents generate code and carry out stages of computational workflows, an evaluative understanding of what happens in computation is more important than ever. Students must be able to examine data, assumptions, transformations, methodological and model choices, uncertainty, sources of error, the validity of outputs, and reproducibility. We particularly value the ability to show how agentic AI, grounded in this understanding, can enable a step change in what humanists can do: from using individual tools to designing multi-stage workflows and addressing research questions that were previously difficult to approach.

The transition to agentic coding does not lower the technical expectations of the position; it raises them. The appointee must have substantial, demonstrable technical depth and be able to teach students to inspect, test, debug, validate, and, when necessary, revise AI-generated code and complex computational workflows. A conventional humanities profile supplemented by limited coding experience will not constitute a strong profile for this position.

Duties and responsibilities

The appointee will carry out all curriculum and other teaching-development work in close collaboration with other Digital Humanities staff. They will:

• • design, deliver, and develop research-based teaching in digital humanities, primarily at master’s level and, where appropriate, at bachelor’s and doctoral levels
  • contribute to the long-term development of the digital humanities curriculum and collaboration with the other LingDig study tracks and degree programmes in the Faculty of Arts
  • develop accessible methods teaching for students across the Faculty of Arts and new ways of involving students in curriculum development, project work, and interdisciplinary learning communities
  • develop teaching in which large language models, prompts, and AI agents are used to design and implement computational workflows and to evaluate their assumptions, limitations, uncertainty, bias, implications for authorship, reproducibility, and the traceability of evidence
  • develop project- and problem-based teaching in which students from different disciplines work together with authentic research data and questions
  • supervise and examine theses and contribute to student guidance, programme development, and academic administration
  • participate in digital humanities research and infrastructure activities and build collaboration with research projects, language technology and other disciplines, CSC, and galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM), and
  • conduct research that supports the remit of the position and integrate current research, data, and methods into teaching.

Indicative areas of teaching include:

• • Programming and computational practice in the age of agentic AI: prompt design and evaluation, large language models, agentic coding, retrieval-augmented and agentic workflows, multimodal methods, and critical evaluation of generated code, computation, and results.
  • Text and data methods: computational text analysis, text mining, corpus construction, data and metadata work, FAIR principles, and linked data.
  • Data-intensive research computing: reproducible workflows, containers, high-performance computing, Slurm environments, and the appropriate use of GPU resources.
  • Digital cultural heritage: OCR and HTR, enrichment of historical and multimodal collections, and applied studio courses delivered with GLAM partners.

This list describes the overall teaching profile of the position; it does not imply that one person will independently teach every topic. The appointee will develop teaching collaboratively with colleagues in the Department and the relevant degree programmes, complementing the existing curriculum with their particular strengths.

Selection criteria

The successful candidate must:

• • hold an applicable doctoral degree in digital humanities or another field relevant to the position
  • demonstrate the ability to provide high-quality research-based teaching and supervise theses
  • demonstrate good teaching skills
  • have strong, current, and demonstrable technical competence in programming, data handling, research computing, and AI methods, and the ability to teach them at a technically demanding level
  • provide evidence of successful teaching of humanities students with varied levels of technical experience
  • provide evidence of designing and developing courses, curricula, learning materials, or assessment practices
  • demonstrate the ability to renew the teaching of programming and computational practice for the era of agentic coding and to teach critical evaluation of AI-generated code, computation, and results, and
  • possess excellent collaboration and communication skills in an interdisciplinary and international environment.

Successful performance of the duties requires excellent proficiency in English. In addition, the appointee must have good Finnish and satisfactory Swedish skills. If the person admitted to the position does not speak Finnish, they are expected to learn Finnish within reasonable time from beginning of the position. Further information on language proficiency and the demonstration of language proficiency is available on the University website.

This is a teaching-focused appointment. In comparing qualified applicants, particular weight will be given to:

• • the quality and breadth of teaching, pedagogical training, and the ability to support students from varied disciplinary and technical backgrounds
  • concrete evidence of renewing courses, curricula, learning materials, and assessment, with the applicant’s own contribution clearly identified
  • depth of technical competence and evidence of teaching programming, research computing, and AI methods at a demanding level, including the testing, debugging, and validation of generated code and workflows
  • a creative but considered vision for the future of digital humanities education and methods teaching serving the Faculty of Arts more broadly
  • experience of project-based, collaborative, and interdisciplinary teaching and student supervision
  • research activity supporting the position and collaboration with research projects, infrastructures, or GLAM organisations, and
  • the teaching demonstration and performance in the interview

Applicants must substantiate their teaching merits with concrete examples and identify their own role in teaching development. A degree or primary research profile in digital humanities is not required, but applicants coming from another field must explain particularly clearly how their expertise connects to humanities data and research questions, technically demanding computational practice, and the development of digital humanities education. General interest in teaching or emerging technologies, or a general computational profile without such evidence, will not constitute a strong profile for the position.

How to apply

Please submit the following documents in English:

• • a curriculum vitae
  • a numbered list of publications, with the five publications most relevant to the position clearly marked
  • a report of no more than three pages on teaching qualifications. Using concrete examples, the report should cover teaching experience, pedagogical training, course and curriculum development, the development of learning materials and assessment, student supervision, and the applicant’s own contribution
  • a report of no more than two pages on the applicant’s research profile relevant to the position, scholarly networks, and collaboration, and
  • a statement of no more than three pages setting out a vision for the development of digital humanities teaching and methods teaching serving the Faculty of Arts more broadly over the next 3–5 years. The statement must include one concrete example of how programming instruction should be renewed in response to agentic coding and how students should be taught to evaluate the reliability of generated code, computation, and results. Applicants whose primary background is outside digital humanities must use this statement to explain particularly clearly how their expertise fits the position.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an interview and a teaching demonstration. The teaching demonstration will assess, in particular, the candidate’s ability to teach a specified audience of humanities students, formulate clear learning outcomes, engage learners, and connect conceptual understanding with practical work. It is a teaching session, not a research presentation.

Applications, together with the required attachments, must be submitted through the University of Helsinki Recruitment System by 3.10.2026 at 23:59 local Helsinki time.

Further information about the position is available from Mikko Tolonen, professor of Digital Humanities, mikko.tolonen@helsinki.fi. For questions about the recruitment process, please contact recruitment@helsinki.fi (please indicate the title of the position in the heading of the email).

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