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Help Your Advisor Support You
Digital dissertations can be new to advisors too. Here are some resources to help you and your advisor navigate this together.
- Secure buy-in/approval from your dissertation committee and advisor early on!
- Consider how your project will be evaluated and how you will convey its value–see, for example, the MLA’s “Guidelines for Evaluating Work in the Digital Humanities and Digital Media.” Note: we include a larger list of evaluation materials in our guide for Faculty Advisors, which we also recommend students review.
- It cannot be stated enough: document, document, document your process so you can make it clear to those who will critique this work. For an excellent example on documentation and process work refer to Amanda Visconti’s dissertation blog.
- There are a number of publications available to inform on this topic as well. One great example: Benoit Majerus’ open access article “Training the Trainer: Being a PhD Supervisor of a Digital Historian in the Making” is a short opinion piece on methodologies, challenges, and tools of digital history, and thoughts on collaboration and evaluation.
- The entirety of Katina Roger Putting the Humanities PhD to Work (Duke UP, 2020) is recommended. But, especially relevant to this topic is the chapter called “What Faculty Advisors Can Do” which might be equally valuable to advisors and students. Roger’s text is fully available as an ebook via the Mina Rees Library.
- Check out our podcast discussion with GC faculty member and digital dissertation advisor Dr. Matthew K. Gold who touches upon these topics. GC alum Kalle Westerling‘s podcast episode also offers a relevant student’s perspective.
Establish Community
Having a community to troubleshoot with, bounce ideas off, and even learn with can help keep you inspired and motivated. And, being part of a larger scholarly community has career-level benefits. Here are a few suggested starting places for finding like-minded scholars:
- Attend GCDI Working Groups – connect with others learning and building projects with Python, R, digital archives, and mapping
- Register for the Digital Dissertation Commons Group–a group on the Commons, specific to those interested in/working on digital dissertations. Commons groups are great for establishing community, asking questions, and sharing resources.
- Join the GC’s New Media Lab which offers avenues for sharing your work, obtaining funding, and gaining access to digital tools you might not otherwise be able to use
- Join the New York City Digital Humanities online community (NYCDH) to connect with a broader range of digital scholars in the area
- Join a national/international DH scholarly society/collective such as the Association for Computers and Humanities (ACH), Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), and Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC)
- Sign up for a DH/digital studies listservs–these are a great way to get connected with other projects, resources, funding opportunities, and jobs–the DHSI, Association of Internet Researchers, Leonardo, and Digital Humanities Network are good places to start
- Apply for a fellowship from GCDI, Teaching and Learning Center, Futures Initiative, or Publics Lab
Fund Your Work/Training
There are a number of options at CUNY and externally for securing funding for digital projects, training, and resources. Based on the needs of your project, you might obtain funds to build or host the work, purchase relevant tech, hire additional help–such as a programmer or designer, or even to attend a class or institute.
- Provost’s Digital Innovation Grants (PDIG) are GCDI-funded training, start-up, and implementation grants. The site also hosts listings of previous award winners and their project summaries to offer a sense of what has been previously funded.
- New Media Lab Awards are for lab members, and include stipends, project, and dissertation grants
- The GC’s Publics Lab offers a number of grants that would benefit those working on public focused endeavors
- For those affiliated with institutions in the Greater NYC area, the annual NYCDH Student Award is for prototypes, in progress, and completed digital work
- NEH Office of Digital Humanities Grants are available for projects that have a faculty member who could serve as the grant PI. (For an example of a GC alum who received this grant for their dissertation work, read about Erin Rose Glass’ NEH funded #SocialDiss/Social Paper project as a chapter in an edited collection or check out the whole project on her website)
- Many archival institutions fund small DH projects that utilize their holdings. For those interested in archives, internal funding options include, for example, the Lost and Found Archive research grants and CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies awards. For external archives, consider what institutions hold content in your area. See, for example, the Digital Humanities Fellowship at the American Philosophical Society or the Digital Collections Fellowship at Omohundro Institute
Build Digital Skills
It’s common for students to not yet have all the skills required to develop their digital project. Here are some ways to change that:
- Attend GC Digital Research Institute (DRI) an online week-long introduction to core digital skills, offered each January
- Digital skills and related workshops are offered by many GC groups – the Digital Fellows, ITP Program, Publics Lab, Teaching and Learning Center, Quantitative Research Consulting Center, and the Library. Keep an eye on EO/APO emails and bookmark these pages!
- Request a Digital Fellow Consultation–a 1-1 consultation with a digital fellow to talk through digital dissertation ideas and determine what skills you need
- Utilize CUNY’s access to online tech tutorials via LinkedIn Learning–a website that offers online tutorials and courses covering a wide array of digital skills (note: NYPL card credentials required)
- Review the Library’s Digital Tools and Techniques Guide
- Get a handle on project management! Organization skills are as important as technical! As previously mentioned, ITP Program in particular tends to offer project management workshops each year.
- Digital skills summer institutes offer key skills outside of the semester–popular options include: Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) at the University of Victoria, Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School, Dream Lab at University of Pennsylvania’s Price Lab, Summer Institutes in Computational Social Sciences (SICSS)
- Read digital skills blogs and other freely available digital guides–some recommendations include Jonathan Reeve’s blog post “Best Practices for Dissertations in the 21st Century” (focused on digital dissertations exclusively), Programming Historian (a comprehensive website for tech tutorials), Digital Fellow Nicole Cote’s VisDepot guide (for beginner friendly data & visualization resources), the Data Sitters Club project (for computational text analysis), Melanie Walsh’s free Introduction to Cultural Analytics & Python textbook, and the Tool Tips section of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP) (for digital pedagogy folks)
Episode 1: Matt Gold
TL;DR: check out the episode’s Key Takeaways
Digital Fellows Di Yoong, Nicole Cote, and Zach Lloyd talk to GC professor Matt Gold about his perspective as a digital dissertation advisor, the benefits and hurdles of producing and archiving digital scholarship, and tips on navigating departmental dissertation conversations.
Building a Project
Make your idea a reality. This guide should help those in the building stage develop their project, connect with available resources, and establish community. Want a different view–alternatively, see the resources from each guide as one large consolidated list.