Practicing (Post-)Publishing (PPP)
Eligibility: UK/International (including EU) graduates with the required entry requirements
Duration: Full-Time – between three and three and a half years fixed term
Application deadline: 30 April 2025
Interview date: Will be confirmed to shortlisted candidates
Start date: September 2025
For further details contact: Rebekka Kiesewetter
Introduction
The Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC) and its Post-Publishing research strand invite applications to a fully-funded PhD studentship that explores alternative publishing practices and formats and discusses their potential to cultivate more supportive, diverse, and equitable publishing cultures.
Project Details
We invite applications for PhD projects that challenge and intervene into the prevailing systems of scholarly publishing which prioritise research outputs (such as books and papers) as well as competitive, individualistic authorship models as the main metrics for academic recognition and success. This conventional approach often reduces scholarly works to commodities, neglecting the intricate socio-material processes of knowledge creation and sharing, which are inherently collaborative involving both human actors (authors, editors, reviewers, programmers) and non-human ones (digital texts, research cultures, technologies).
Doctoral proposals are welcomed that focus on how alternative approaches to publishing can foster collaboration and mutual support over individual competition, social processes over quantifiable outputs, and knowledge equity and diversity in scholarly publishing. This includes but is not limited to applications that explore publishing and editorial collectives in- and outside the university, publishing practices (including joint writing, open peer review, shared annotation, alternative licencing, and collective editorship), as well as open, processual, and versioned books. The members of the supervisory team have expertise in critical, experimental, activist, and academic print and digital publishing; radical open access publishing; social justice, knowledge equity and diversity in academia; as well as in curatorial studies and spatial practices. We welcome applications that focus on specific case studies, engage in practice-research, and/or want to conduct an experimental publishing projects.
We encourage projects that critically engage with existing literature in fields such as publishing and communication studies, digital humanities, cultural studies, media studies, and critical university studies as well as with past and current publishing initiatives and publications. Questions of interest include:
- How can collaborative and processual approaches to publishing displace traditional metrics of scholarly productivity and success?
- How can these approaches provide alternatives to a scholarly communication system currently focused on books and articles as objects and commodities?
- How can these approaches create more supportive, diverse, and equitable research and publishing environments
Funding
Tuition fees and bursary
Benefits
The successful candidate will receive comprehensive research training including technical, personal and professional skills. All researchers at Coventry University (from PhD to Professor) are part of the Doctoral Researcher College, which provides support with high-quality training and career development activities.
The successful candidate will become a member of the Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC) and its Post-Publishing research strand. They will benefit from opportunities and resources within the Centre. These include participating in reading groups and team meetings, co-organising events and conferences, and teaching opportunities, which will help the candidate to develop important communication, presentation, and critical thinking skills. Beyond the CPC, the successful candidate will be supported in undertaking networking and knowledge-transfer activities to develop their research and future career: such as (co-)writing academic research articles and participating in conferences, joining relevant professional societies, and participating in professional forums.
Entry requirements
- A minimum of a 2:1 first degree in a relevant discipline/subject area with a minimum 60% mark in the project element or equivalent with a minimum 60% overall module average.
PLUS
- The potential to engage in innovative research and to complete the PhD within 3.5 years.
- A minimum of English language proficiency (IELTS academic overall minimum score of 7.0 with a minimum of 6.5 in each component).
Additional Requirements
The successful candidate will have a theoretical and/or practical foundation in fields related to publishing: This includes publishing studies, graphic design, artistic publishing, digital humanities, communication studies, literature studies, or related disciplines. Working with social justice, intersectional feminist, posthumanist, and decolonial approaches is especially desirable.
How to apply
To find out more about the project, please contact Rebekka Kiesewetter.
All applications require full supporting documentation, a covering letter, plus a 2000-word supporting statement showing how the applicant’s expertise and interests are relevant to the project.
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