Digital dissertations are graduate dissertations that are made using digital tools or that are entirely born-digital. Digital dissertations have been around for a decade or more, and are the product of graduate students wanting to explore beyond the bounds of a 40-200-page PDF and explore what digital media can add to academic argumentation and presentation. Projects can be anything from podcasts and YouTube series’ to digital publications to video games and virtual experiences. Typically these dissertations are considered “non-traditional” and it may be difficult to find buy-in from professors, advisors, and other academics for writing and publishing a dissertation in digital form.
Luckily, there are plenty of examples and resources of digital dissertations published by graduate students (now Ph.D.s) who have successfully defended them. This page contains a non-comprehensive list of digital dissertations in a variety of formats, as well as a list of resources for pursuing a digital dissertation. If you’re interested in starting or converting your dissertation and want to learn more, contact us at digitalcolab@cornell.edu to see how we can support you.
Examples of digital dissertations
Resources for creating digital dissertations
- Innovative Dissertations. University of Pittsburgh.
- A gigantic list of in-progress and defended digital dissertations and the positions that the Ph.D.s who completed those dissertations now occupy.
- Starter kit for considering a DH dissertation. Amanda Visconti.
- Literature Geek, dissertation tag (all of Amanda Visconti’s posts about working through her digital dissertation). Amanda Visconti.
- DH Dissertation/Tenure/Promotion guidelines Zotero library. Amanda Visconti.
- What is a Dissertation? Template for New Models, Methods and Media. #RemixtheDiss.
- “Documenting Digital Projects: Instituting Guidelines for Digital Dissertations and Theses in the Humanities.” Roxanne Shirazi and Stephen Zweibel.
- From Precedents to Collective Action: Realities and Recommendations for Digital Dissertations in History. Zoe LeBlanc, Celeste Tường Vy Sharpe, and Jeri Wieringa.
- “Multimodal theses and dissertations.” In Digital Scholarship in Education: Multimodailty as a Window into Learning. Ed. Brendan Jacobs.
- “Rethinking the Dissertation: Opportunities Created by Emerging Technologies.” Katrina Rogers.
- “Digital Humanities Dissertations: A New Model for PhD Scholarship.” Jenifer Ishee Hoffman.
- “Not All Who Want To, Can–Not All Who Can, Will: Extending Notions of Unconventional Doctoral Dissertations.” Brittany Amwell.
- “Digital Doctorates.” In Digital Studies / Le champ numérique 11(1). Randa El Khatib, Reese Alexandra Irwin, Caroline Winter, and. Michelle Levy.
- The authentic dissertation: alternative ways of knowing, research, and representation. Donald Trent Jacobs.