UC San Diego Hiring for Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Law with a focus on Designing Just Fut at La Jolla, CA  Full Time

The Department of Communication at UC San Diego seeks faculty candidates at the level of Associate Professor whose research, teaching, and service will advance scholarship and institutional solutions for designing more just and equitable systems and structures. We seek an interdisciplinary scholar, artist, or practitioner who engages with the study and design of laws and policies related to media, communication, and culture with a focus on Native American/Alaska Native/Pacific Islander, Indigenous, Black, and/or migrant futures.

This search is part of a UC San Diego-wide cluster hire on Designing Just Futures (DJF) that aims to recruit scholars, artists, or practitioners who can contribute to the advancement of design, social justice, and futures and seeks engagement across disciplines to address issues of territory, access and equity, and social and political debates pertinent to Native American, Indigenous, Black, and migrant communities, while also working within their home departments and professional communities.

Faculty hired under this initiative will join the UC San Diego Design Lab and the Indigenous Futures Institute to forge a new paradigm of engagement and collaboration that draws on the geographic, academic, institutional, and cultural strengths of our tri-national region across Southern California, Baja California, and the Kumeyaay region.

As a member of the UC San Diego Design Lab and the Indigenous Futures Institute, the successful candidate will center Native American, Indigenous, Black, and/or migrant people and communities in collaborative and shared efforts toward inclusive and justice-oriented design solutions to complex socio-technical problems. We seek an interdisciplinary scholar, artist, or practitioner whose work interrogates what it means to design, and whose work decenters dominant technocratic design practices in favor of interdisciplinary approaches informed by Native American and Indigenous Studies, Black, and/or migration studies in dialogue with critical race studies and critical legal studies. We seek a colleague who, likewise, addresses questions of how design engages with or raises critical questions about legal ownership, territory, and citizenship.

Areas of research and design may include but are not limited to the following: legal questions in genetics and health, for example as they relate to consent in genetic data collection and the ownership and management of digital genetic databases; the unauthorized appropriation of Indigenous, Black or migrant knowledge and culture, its relationship to conventional intellectual property laws, and its implications for envisioning alternative conceptions of law and property; questions of surveillance, power, and freedom that arise in Indigenous, Black and migrant interactions with digital technology; the questions raised for citizenship, territory, and sovereignty in both the breach and upholding of Indigenous, Black and migrant rights in treaties, laws and policies at federal, state, and local level; questions of justice that arise at the intersection between Indigenous, Black and migrant rights and disability rights, including conceptions of disability and access; responses to the challenges of environment and climate change, for example in rights to water and other resources, and forest management. In all these areas we are especially interested in scholars whose work holds promise for Indigenous, Black and migrant futures.

As part of their teaching portfolio, faculty hired under Designing Just Futures will be expected to design and teach courses that align with the Department of Communication, the Design Lab, and the Indigenous Futures Institute programs.

The faculty member will advance UC San Diego’s commitment to the inclusion of Indigenous, Black, and/or migrant communities, anti-racism, anti-oppression, equity, and social justice. We especially welcome candidates whose professional experience, community engagement, and personal background have facilitated their understanding of and ability to better serve students from Indigenous and other underrepresented populations.

UC San Diego was built on the unceded territory of the Kumeyaay people. Today and every day, we honor their stewardship of this land and their tremendous contribution to our region. Land acknowledgements are an important gesture of collective recognition and accountability. But we also commit ourselves to action, to truth in learning and teaching the history of this place and its people, a reckoning with injustices, past and present, and a pathway forward that respects the dignity and human rights of all.

The Department of Communication and the University of California San Diego are committed to academic excellence and diversity within the faculty, staff, and student body. We seek candidates who will maintain the highest standards of scholarship and professional activity and make a strong and meaningful contribution to the development of a campus climate that supports equality and diversity.

The University of California is committed to creating and maintaining a community dedicated to the advancement, application, and transmission of knowledge and creative endeavors through academic excellence, where all individuals who participate in University programs and activities can work and learn together in a safe and secure environment, free of violence, harassment, discrimination, exploitation, or intimidation. With this commitment, UC San Diego requires all candidates for academic appointments with tenure or security of employment to complete, sign, and upload the Institutional Reference Check release form entitled “Authorization to Release Form” into RECRUIT as part of their application.

Candidates should have a JD, Ph.D, or other relevant terminal degree, or have advanced to candidacy at the time of application.

Candidates should have a JD, Ph.D, or other relevant terminal degree, or have advanced to candidacy by the start date.

In the Department of Communication, for appointment at the Associate Professor rank, we expect either (1) a book published by a scholarly press with a rigorous peer review process, along with at least two peer-reviewed journal articles or book chapters; OR (2) a portfolio of at least eight peer-reviewed journal articles or book chapters by the start date..

• 3 required (contact information only)

The University of California, San Diego is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, covered veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.

As a University employee, you will be required to comply with all applicable University policies and/or collective bargaining agreements, as may be amended from time to time. Federal, state, or local government directives may impose additional requirements.

The University of California prohibits smoking and tobacco use at all University controlled properties.

The UC San Diego Annual Security & Fire Safety Report is available online at: https://www.police.ucsd.edu/docs/annualclery.pdf. This report provides crime and fire statistics, as well as institutional policy statement & procedures. Contact the UC San Diego Police Department at (858) 534-4361 if you want to obtain paper copies of this report.