Shaping the Digital Dissertation: Knowledge Production in the Arts and Humanities is out this May 2021, co-edited by Virginia Kuhn and Anke Finger. As the inaugural director of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at the UConn Humanities Institute, Prof. Finger has long been involved with digital scholarship at the graduate level. She created a graduate certificate that can help graduate students work beyond traditional formats, gain skill sets for career diversity and use computer technologies in their research.

First an author, contributing to the volume, then a co-editor with Virginia Kuhn, a renowned scholar on media arts and multimodal scholarship, Prof. Finger is looking forward to present this collection of essays by senior scholars and recent PhD students who embarked on digital scholarship in their dissertations. Their case studies will help current and future PhD students to make sense of and structure their own digital work.

Seeking to put some clear blueprints into both advisors’ and graduate students’ hands “The volume is arranged in two sections: the first, written by senior scholars, addresses conceptual concerns regarding the direction and assessment of digital dissertations in the broader context of doctoral education. The second section consists of case studies by PhD students whose research resulted in a natively digital dissertation that they have successfully defended. These early-career researchers have been selected to represent a range of disciplines and institutions.”

“Despite the profound effect of incorporated digital tools on dissertations, the literature concerning them is limited. This volume aims to provide a fresh, up-to-date view on the digital dissertation, considering the newest technological advances.”

The book is published with Open Book Publishers in both print and online formats.