Research Fellow (Humanities/Arts/Social Science)

NTU’s College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CoHASS) includes four schools: Humanities; Social Sciences; Art, Design and Media; and the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, in addition to the Nanyang Centre for Public Administration. Disciplines include economics, psychology, sociology, politics and global affairs, communication, information and media studies, history, linguistics, philosophy, art history, literary studies, and art, design and media.

About the Fellowship
The NTU CoHASS Early Career Research Fellowships aims to nurture promising young researchers within the humanities, arts, and social sciences, enabling them to develop strong, independent research portfolios while contributing to the College's research, teaching, and intellectual life.

Areas of Research
Scholars from all humanities, arts, and social science disciplines are welcome to apply, provided their research engages meaningfully with one or more of the following College’s thematic clusters.

Digital Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences

• Digital capitalism and its impact on society and culture

• Use of computational, digital, and AI tools

• Digital and AI-driven creativity, cultural production, and conservation

• Ethical and governance frameworks for AI

• Overall goal, to support flourishing of human individuality amid expanding digital capitalism

Global Asia

• Develop COHASS as an Asia-wide hub for Global Asia studies

• Trans-disciplinary research on intra-Asian connections and Asia’s engagement with the world

• Grow Southeast and South Asia add to expertise on East Asia focus

• Policy-relevant but research-rooted

Health, Culture, and Society

• Building on the substantial concentrations of expertise across the College, the centre adopts an interdisciplinary, patient-centred, experience-grounded approach to health and sickness.

• We are interested in expanding expertise in the following key areas: (i) digital medical technologies; (ii) medical pluralism and belief; (iii) the role of the arts in shaping experiences of health and sickness; (iv) the relationship between medical institutions and individuals; and (v) disability studies and neurodivergence.

• Example areas of interest include: doctor-patient communication; the role of empathy in shaping health outcomes; access to healthcare; the implications of concepts such as the ‘medical gaze’ and ‘epistemic authority’; the social construction of health; the narrative ethics of stories of sickness; the socio-cultural determinants of risk; and the impact of illness metaphors.

Arts, Culture, and Sustainability

• Cross-college centre on arts, culture, sustainability, and technology

• NTU Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science are jointly establishing the Max Planck-NTU Centre for Biocultural Worlding in January 2026; the first Max Planck Centre in the Humanities in Asia

• Collaborate with Singapore's cultural sector to drive regional leadership in this space

Key Responsibilities:

• Fellows will be appointed to one of CoHASS’s constituent Schools or research centres.

• They will pursue research in their own disciplinary field while also engaging with the College’s cross-disciplinary research clusters.

• Fellows contribute to teaching and administration in their host School and may participate in cross-college initiatives.

• Each Fellow will be supported by a named faculty mentor within their host unit to provide academic guidance and career development, while maintaining full independence in their own research.

• This three-year appointment offers early-career scholars the opportunity to establish themselves as future leaders in research and teaching within a vibrant, interdisciplinary academic environment.

Job requirements:

• PhD degree in the areas of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

• Able to work independently and to collaborate with cross-disciplinary research clusters

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills

• Relevant publication track records are an advantage

Scholars who are particularly interested in opportunities at NTU are encouraged to send a CV to D-HASS@ntu.edu.sg.

We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified.

Hiring Institution: NTU