The NPS Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Program places recent humanities PhDs with NPS sites and programs across the agency. In collaboration with NPS staff and partners, the incoming cohort of fifteen (15) Fellows will contribute to planning and preparation for America at 250, an initiative inspired by the semi-quincentennial of the Declaration of Independence. This event provides an opportunity for the NPS to tell a more inclusive story of the American past and present. The NPS is committed to exploring the full complexity of our history, even if that history is uncomfortable, contested, or erased. The humanities research supported by this Fellowship will expand these efforts, encouraging creative approaches to documentation, interpretation, and outreach.

This opportunity is supported by a generous grant from The Mellon Foundation through the National Park Foundation (NPF). The project is administered via a three-way agreement among NPS, National Park Foundation (NPF), and American Conservation Experience (ACE).

Job Title: National Park Service Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow: Workers, Agency and the Industrial Landscape

Employer: American Conservation Experience (ACE)

Department: EPIC Program, National Park Service (NPS) Division

Location: Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell, Massachusetts

Status: Temporary, Full-time, Exempt

Term: Position is fully funded through August 31, 2025

Start Date: September 2023

Host Description: This Fellowship is placed with Lowell National Historical Park (LNHP), in Lowell MA, an important site in the history of labor, women's history, and abolitionist sentiment, which was formative of industrial capitalism and actualized through the connections that industrial capital in the American north had with colonial expansion in the trans-Atlantic world, including enslaved labor and plantation agriculture in the American south and Caribbean.

LNHP preserves and interprets the historic structures and stories of the Industrial Revolution and its legacies, serving as a catalyst for revitalizing the city's built and economic environment, and promoting cultural heritage and community engagement. LNHP is a nationally recognized "partnership park" having unique relationships with community organizations, local government, educational organizations, and other stakeholders, who are active participants to the park's outreach and daily activities.

The major interpretive themes of LNHP are labor history; industrial capitalism; technological innovation; environmental history; community/immigration and urbanization; women's history, and the history of slavery and the abolitionist movement. All of these are understood broadly as themes that enable public understanding of the historical and cultural continuums that run through the 18th and 19th centuries, into the present day, and that in turn shape our social future.

ACE is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing rewarding environmental service opportunities for young adults and emerging professionals of all backgrounds to explore and improve public lands while gaining practical professional experience. The EPIC NPS Division works alongside the National Park Service across the United States, from Alaska to Puerto Rico, to support the NPS in its mission to "preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations" while providing career promoting individual placement opportunities.

Position Description: Each NPS Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow will complete work in four areas. Fellows will (1) perform project-based research; (2) share research results; (3) produce and substantially contribute to interpretive and educational products; and (4) pursue career-focused work.

1) Project-Based Research: During their first year, the Mellon Fellow placed at Lowell National Historical Park will conduct research on a broad range of topics related to the park's interpretive themes in preparation for the re-design of the Boott Cotton Mill exhibition. The Boot Cotton Mill is the park's major exhibition space and one of the primary ways visitors engage with the site's history. The Fellow will play a critical role in the initial conceptualization of the exhibition's thematic content through their research and by working collaboratively with mentors and park staff to consider how the proposed themes may be implemented within the constraints of a major exhibition. This would include a consideration of the physical space in which the exhibition will be installed as well as potential interpretive media, such as photographs, maps, documents and artifacts.

In year two, the Fellow will consult with their mentorship team, as well as other subject matter experts as needed, to propose a project for their second year. Ideally, the second-year project would focus on a sub-set of the research work conducted during their first year. The Fellow will have the opportunity to invest more deeply in a topic or program of their choosing and will concentrate on applying their research findings to the conceptualization of a component of the proposed exhibition or related programming for future implementation. This work might focus on fully developing one subset of the exhibition or creating a set of ancillary educational programs that would be offered in association with the exhibition.

2) Sharing Research Results: The Fellow will be expected to share their first-year research findings with park staff through a formal presentation, followed by public offerings of the presentation content in a format to be determined in conjunction with mentors and other park staff members. The Fellow will be encouraged to seek opportunities for publication of their research findings in professional journals and to develop interpretive media content based on their research for park creation and distribution. This might include social media posts, web-based content or print media as well as in-person sharing in the form of tours, lecture, or brief gallery talks. It is anticipated that the results of the 2nd year's research will be shared more formally through future exhibition content and/or ancillary educational programs.

The Fellow will be expected to develop and sustain connections with program-provided mentors and host staff, associated NPS staff, members of their Fellowship cohort, and other Fellows across the tenure of the program. In addition to being provided mentorship and support themselves, the Fellow will have the opportunity to mentor others and to enrich staff knowledge by organizing events such as virtual speaker series and presentations. Twice a year, the Fellow will participate with their cohort and other Fellows in a virtual conference for NPS staff and partners to provide updates about their research. The Fellow will be responsible for tracking and reporting accomplishments and for supplying copies of interpretive, educational, and research products to their host and to the National Coordinator.

3) Interpretive and Educational products: The Fellow will work with mentors and a park-based support team to identify interpretive and educational engagements with their research as public history, public archaeology, critical museology, or some combination of those practices. Examples of potential interpretation and educational outcomes of this Fellowship opportunity include advising and co-creating narrative and object-centered storylines for an entirely new museum exhibition in the Boott Cotton Mills Museum; co-developing multi-modal expressions of park themes and topics; engaging with the constellation of park constituents in processes of public curatorship; developing content for and facilitating public programs for lifelong learners; and developing programs for primary and secondary school-age learners and their teachers. The Fellow will actively participate in shaping and ensuring park narratives are historically accurate, and intellectually and affectively engaging for a wide range of users, especially underserved and historically disadvantaged persons and cohorts.

4) Career-focused research and products: In consultation with their mentors, the Fellow will carry out a career-centered project. About 20 percent of the Fellowship will be dedicated to this scholarly work that advances the Fellow's career path. In consultation with their mentors, the Fellow will carry out a career-centered project. About 20 percent of the Fellowship will be dedicated to this scholarly work that advances the Fellow's career path. The Fellow will be supported by a multidisciplinary team that draws on local, regional, and agency-wide expertise. In addition to NPS staff, the Fellow will have an external mentor whose work examines and explicates the themes and historic importance of the site, its social history, and its multicultural present

Essential Responsibilities and Tasks:

• Work with mentors to identify and implement research practices that support public history and critical museology.
• Conduct original research into the intersections of industrialization, the history of women, technology, and the dispossession of Indigenous communities, and the interrelationship of the industrial and plantation slavery economies within the trans-Atlantic world.
• Produce a conceptual outline identifying potential material resources that support and illustrate analysis of the historical processes and intersections noted above for internal review and discussion.
• Co-lead a public engagement process with those research and programming processes, to enact public history, public archaeology, and critical museology.

Required Experience and Qualifications:

• Must be a PhD in any field of the humanities or humanistic social sciences. Scholars who received or will receive their PhD between May 1, 2018, and August 15, 2023, are eligible to apply. For more information on eligibility, visit https://www.nationalparks.org/nps-mellon-humanities-postdoctoral-fellowship
• Subject matter expertise in labor history, women's history, historical archaeology of the trans-Atlantic world, public history, or anthropology of modern societies. Additional understanding of the early ethno-history of New England would be helpful.
• Excellent research, writing, and communication skills.
• Experience or interest in developing skills in community facilitation processes.
• Ability to work independently and as a collaborator in a team.
• Skill in project planning and management, and the desire and ability to engage multiple, concurrent, and variable tasks as a matter of course.
• Personal time management skills necessary to accomplish tasks and meet deadlines in collaboration with a large interdisciplinary team.
• Selective factors include merit of scholarship, commitment to the public humanities, and capacity to complete research and project implementation successfully.

Other Requirements:

• Must be a US citizen or Permanent Resident,as required to comply with U.S. government contracts.
• Must be proficient in English.
• Must pass a federal criminal background check; Fellowship is also contingent upon a successful security background check with the NPS.
• Must be willing to abide by ACE Policy and Federal Drug Free workplace policies and laws. ACE reserves the right to drug test at any time
• Must verify that they are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 by the time they start their fellowship or request a medical or religious exemption.
• Must be willing to abide by a requirement to acknowledge The Mellon Foundation, the National Park Service, the National Park Foundation, and American Conservation Experience, in any publications generated by this project.
• Must be willing to abide by federal policy that research results, publications, films, videos, artistic or similar endeavors resulting from the fellowship, other than the specifically career-focused work, will become the property of the United States, and as such, will be in the public domain and not subject to copyright laws.
• Consent to being photographed and to the release of such photographic images.

Physical Demands, Work Environment, and Working Conditions:

• Physical Demands: Requires frequent sitting, standing, walking, using hands to handle or feel, reaching with hands and arms, talks and hears with or without assistive personnel and/or devices. Manual dexterity required for use of computer keyboard/mouse and other office equipment with or without reasonable accommodations. May be occasionally required to stoop, kneel, climb stairs, and/or crouch (all physical demands are required with or without reasonable accommodations). The National Park Service host will provide reasonable accommodations, if needed, to meet task assignments.
• Vision Requirements: Requires close, distance, peripheral and depth perception vision as well as the ability to focus. The National Park Service host will provide reasonable accommodations, if needed, to meet task assignments.
• Environmental: Mainly indoor, office environment conditions; indoor air quality is good, and temperature is controlled. This is describing both provided office spaces and home office spaces.
• Noise Environment: Moderate noise such as in a business office with equipment and light traffic. This is describing both provided office spaces and home office spaces.
• Travel: This position requires domestic travel as needed for program duties.

Salary & Benefits:

Compensation: Starting annualized salary $65,000 with annualized COLA to $67,600 for Year 2 (40 hours/week for 52-weeks). Paid bi-weekly, a two-week pay period. Travel funding is provided, and Fellows will not be responsible for allowable/approved program travel. Each Fellow will receive an annual research fund of $3,000.

Medical/Health Benefits: ACE offers competitive medical and ancillary plans (health, mental health, dental, vision, flexible spending accounts, and other supplemental benefits). Fellows are also eligible to participate in ACE's 403b retirement plan, which includes a 1% employer contribution for participating, contributing staff.

Holidays, Vacation, and Sick Time: As a Fellow, you will be eligible to accrue up to 80 hours of paid vacation time annually during your first two years of continuous employment. Additionally, ACE observes 13 paid annual holidays and provides 10 days (or 80 hours) of paid sick time annually.

Additional Benefits: Outdoor Perks - As an ACE Fellow, you will be eligible to receive pro deals which include deep discounts on outdoor gear providing 30 - 50% off retail prices on 100s of established outdoor gear brands.

To Apply: Please submit: 1) a cover letter stating interest and vision for the Fellowship (letters may include a summary of the dissertation, a statement of personal research interests and plans, discussion of past engagement with public humanities, discussion of willingness to participate fully in NPS research and education programs); 2) a comprehensive curriculum vitae; 3) a writing sample accessible to the general public; 4) confirmation of Ph.D. award by August 15, 2023; and 5) names and contact information for 3 professional references.

Deadline to apply: The deadline to apply for this position is January 30, 2023, or until 75 applications meeting eligibility requirements have been received.

Questions about the application process should be sent to mellonhumanities@usaconservation.org

American Conservation Experience provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, American Conservation Experience complies with applicable state and local laws governing non-discrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. ACE encourages all qualified individuals to apply and does not discriminate on the basis of any protected status, including veteran and disability status. ACE is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities under the ADA and provides the opportunity for employees to request reasonable accommodations during the hiring process.