Research Fellow

Amherst has taken a leadership role among highly selective liberal arts colleges and universities in successfully diversifying the racial, socio-economic, and geographic profile of its student body. The College is similarly committed to enriching its educational experience and its culture through the diversity of its faculty, administration and staff.

Job Description:

Amherst College invites applications for the position of Research Fellow at the Emily Dickinson Museum. The Research Fellow in Domestic Labor History is a fixed-term, 30-hour per week position. The expected salary range for this job opportunity is: $42.74 to $47.01 per hour.

The salary offered will vary based on a number of factors, including but not limited to relevant education, training, and experience, tenure status, and other nondiscriminatory business considerations. Amherst College is pleased to provide a comprehensive, highly competitive benefits package that meets the needs of staff and faculty and their families. Click here for Benefits Information.

The Research Fellow in Domestic Labor History will conduct original primary-source research to provide evidence for the Museum to document and interpret the domestic conditions that afforded Emily Dickinson the opportunity to compose a large body of poetic and epistolary work.

Working with archival, manuscript, and material culture collections, the Fellow will examine records including correspondence, financial documents, census data, maps, employment records, newspapers, church records, artifacts, landscapes, the built environment, and other contemporaneous sources to identify and reconstruct the lives and labor of individual domestic workers associated with Dickinson family households and comparable homes in the region.

The Fellow will investigate and analyze the social, economic, and cultural structures of nineteenth-century Amherst and New England—including systems of race, gender, class, ethnicity, immigration, and labor—that shaped the experiences, opportunities, and constraints of domestic workers. This work will situate individual biographies within broader regional contexts of domestic service, wage labor, household economies, and shifting social hierarchies. The Fellow will assess how visible and invisible labor within the home—including cooking, cleaning, laundry, caregiving, agricultural labor, animal husbandry, and other forms of household and homestead management—contributed to sustaining social, psychic, and material environments in which employers could pursue intellectual, professional, civic, and creative endeavors.

The position requires critical attention to gaps and silences in the historical record and interpretive possibilities for representing individuals whose lives were often minimally documented. The Fellow will produce well-documented research findings and will work with the Senior Director of Programs to develop an interpretive framework from these findings. The Museum may incorporate research results into the visitor experience through interpretation, public programs, exhibitions, publications, and institutional scholarship, thereby advancing a fuller and more inclusive account of the historical conditions that supported Dickinson’s authorship.

This position advances the institution’s commitment to inclusive, evidence-based scholarship and to expanding historical interpretation to more fully represent the lives and labor of individuals whose contributions have been understudied or marginalized in the historical record.

Summary of Responsibilities:

Research & Documentation

• Conduct rigorous primary-source research in local, regional, and national archives, including census records, employment records, correspondence, legal documents, newspapers, account books, church records, and genealogical sources.

• Prepare annotated bibliographies and source documentation for institutional archives.

Scholarly Writing & Dissemination

• Identify and reconstruct biographical narratives of individual domestic workers associated with relevant households.

• Produce written analytical research reports and interpretive briefs suitable for internal use, interpretive planning, digital content, and/or public programs.

• Present research results to staff and constituents and to the annual meeting of the Emily Dickinson International Society in July 2027.

Collaboration & Institutional Engagement

• Collaborate with an advisory committee of subject matter experts to determine research directions and work plans, identify resources, and assess progress.

• Periodically present findings to the advisory committee.

• Assist the Senior Director of Programs, Education Programs Manager, and Collections Manager in employing research results to develop museum materials and public programming.

Qualifications:

Required

• M.A. in History, American Studies, African American Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies, Labor History, Public History, or a closely related field.

• 1 to 3 years of related experience.

• An equivalent combination of education/experience in lieu of the minimum education and related experience.

• Demonstrated experience conducting primary-source archival research.

• Demonstrated ability to analyze and interpret archival evidence to interpret how systems of race, gender, class, and ethnicity operated in specific historical settings.

• Excellent scholarly writing and communication skills.

• Ability to work both independently and collaboratively in a museum or public history setting.

• Ability to travel to access primary source material.

• Successful completion of required reference and background checks.

• An acceptable criminal offender records information (CORI) check.

Preferred

• Ph.D. in History, American Studies, African American Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies, Labor History, Public History, or a closely related field.

• Research specialization in 19th-century American social or labor history.

• Experience with genealogical research methodologies.

• Familiarity with material culture and household studies.

• Experience translating scholarly research for public audiences.

The Emily Dickinson Museum comprises two historic houses in the center of Amherst, Massachusetts, associated with the poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) and members of her immediate family during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Homestead was the birthplace and home of the poet Emily Dickinson. The Evergreens, next door, was home to her brother Austin, his wife Susan, and their three children. The Emily Dickinson Museum welcomes 15,000 visitors each year, as well as thousands of virtual and in-person program participants and students of all ages. It conducts an active program of restoration and preservation of the historic structures and grounds, and stewards a collection of 10,000 Dickinson family objects. The Museum was created in 2003 when the two houses merged under the ownership of Amherst College. It is overseen by a separate Board of Governors and is responsible for its own operating, program, and capital funds. Its mission is to spark the imagination by amplifying Emily Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice from the place she called home.

Interested candidates are asked to submit a resume and cover letter online at https://amherst.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/Amherst_Jobs. Please be sure to upload all requested documents prior to clicking Submit. Applications cannot be revised once submitted. (Current employees and students should apply by clicking on the Jobs Hub icon from their Workday home screen.) Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. Amherst College is committed to an inclusive hiring process and will provide reasonable accommodations for candidates throughout the application and interview process upon request.

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.