PhD Oral Exam - Corina MacDonald, Communication Studies

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

Scholarship faces many pressures due in part to changing relationships between contemporary forms of capitalism and the university. Scholarly communication, the continuum of practices and outputs by which scholars share their work, is one aspect of academic labour in which these pressures can be identified. Over the past three and a half decades the widespread adoption of digital technologies for the production and dissemination of scholarship has diversified the outputs and publics of humanities research. This diversification has allowed scholars to embrace new communicative practices and venues, such as social media, blogs, podcasts, and repositories. Digital media can widen access to scholarship, but it also facilitates new data-driven forms of accounting that pressure scholars to be more entrepreneurial and connected. This project examines the impact of these tensions on academic labour through an analysis of open access discourses, practices, and infrastructures. In particular it focuses on the evolution of self-archiving practices and institutional repositories during the past thirty-five years. It shows that the use of digital media in scholarly communication evokes competing claims about the nature and value of digital scholarship, with manifold effects for the assessment and sustainability of non-traditional outputs. These findings reveal how humanities scholars navigate academic labour conditions and policy demands in order to diversify the processes, products, and publics of scholarly communication.