Assistant Professor in Media Industries and AI

Position title: Assistant Professor

Salary range: $88,300-$114,400

Percent time: 100% FTE

Anticipated start: July 1, 2027 or later

Open date: October 6, 2026

Next review date: Friday, Nov 6, 2026 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.

Final date: Wednesday, Jun 30, 2027 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.

The Department of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Media Industries and AI. We seek a scholar whose research and teaching examines artificial intelligence as a media industry phenomenon, including its infrastructures, labor, political economy, regulation, and cultural, artistic, and social implications. We welcome candidates working on any global region and through any critical, historical, or empirical methodology, including but not limited to production studies, platform and infrastructure studies, science and technology studies, critical algorithm studies, political economy, labor studies, cultural and industrial history, and creative or practice-based research on generative media.

We are especially interested in candidates who can speak to one or more of the following: the restructuring of film, television, gaming, digital media, and/or music industries by AI systems; the labor of AI production, from data annotation to creative and technical work displaced or transformed by automation; the environmental, material, and geopolitical infrastructures underlying AI; algorithmic culture, recommendation systems, and platform governance;

or the aesthetics, authorship, and cultural politics of generative and synthetic media.

This position calls for a humanities-based, critical, media industries approach to the study of AI-one attentive to history, culture, power, embodiment, and meaning-making, rather than a purely technical or computational orientation. We therefore welcome scholars whose work engages AI and media industries through racial, gender, queer, global and/or transnational, environmental, creative, and other critical approaches.

Candidates for the position will be expected to teach in our core Film and Media Studies undergraduate and graduate curriculum, and to develop new courses-large lecture classes and smaller seminars-in their areas of expertise. They ideally will participate in existing research clusters and centers within our department, including the Carsey-Wolf Center and its Media Industries and AI Research Initiative, the Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab, and Wireframe Studio, as well as those associated with other departments, programs, and centers on campus.

The faculty of the Department of Film and Media Studies engages in scholarship and pedagogy across multiple scholarly approaches, fostering a dynamic and expansive understanding of film and media study. We are a robust department with over 500 undergraduate majors and 30 doctoral students. With this appointment, we seek to extend the department's scholarly and curricular strengths and advance our department's commitment to diverse, interdisciplinary research and teaching.

The minimum qualification to be considered for this position is the completion of all requirements for a PhD except the dissertation in Film and Media Studies or a related discipline at the time of application.

• Evidence of an active research agenda
• Completion of PhD by appointment start date

• Teaching experience at the university or college level defined as a minimum of one year as teaching assistant or instructor of record
• Evidence of a strong commitment to teaching as indicated by syllabi, teaching evaluations, reference letters, or candidate teaching statement
• Record of peer-reviewed publications
• Demonstrated interest in and use of innovative teaching methods and tools

• Curriculum Vitae
  - Your most recently updated C.V.
• Letter of Application
  - Two pages outlining the candidate's research, teaching, and service experience and their qualifications for the position.
• Statement of Research
  - Two pages describing the applicant's current and future research program in media industries and AI, situating their work within film and…