PhD by Publication

So the other thing I’m working on is my PhD.

“What? You don’t have your PhD yet?” is something several people have asked me over the nearly eighteen years since I started going for it.

Here’s the brief story: I started a dual PhD program at Indiana University in History of Science and Information Science. The history of science school wasn’t the right fit, so I switched fully to information science a few years in. My first dissertation topic (17th century correspondence networks) turned out to be too historical for that school (sigh), so I had to start over. The new topic was scholarly communities in digital humanities.

I ended up getting a postdoc job offer at CMU before finishing my doctorate, and took it. I assumed I’d finish in Pittsburgh. This didn’t happen. The School of Library and Information Science collapsed shortly after I left, merged into the School of Informatics and Computing, and my whole committee quickly decamped either to other parts of IU, or to other universities entirely. I became a doctoral student without a committee in a distant city. Needless to say, finishing became more difficult. Impossible, apparently.

Eventually I timed out.

More PhD shenanigans happened not worth getting into.

But now! I have enrolled in a “PhD by Publication” at the University of Portsmouth under Dr. Claire Bailey-Ross. I must complete it in a year, by 31 January 2027, or they kick me out. So that’s the goal.

It is a deeply uncomfortable exercise. This program requires I defend how my publications made a significant contribution to the field. For someone who lives on self-deprecating humor, this isn’t exactly easy.

Part of the work involves pouring over all my past articles, books, blog posts, bits of software, websites, etc. Actually that’s why I made this new site, especially the CV with accessible links to each of my works. I figured A) it would be easier for me and my committee if everything were in one place and in one format, and B) it would be a great distraction from actually working on the PhD. (As is writing this blog post.)

Why now? Well, despite the luck of my career, I’ve always wanted to finish, so it’s been on my mind a while. I re-started figuring out how to finish in earnest as DOGE was metastasizing into NEH, thinking it would be a good escape strategy. In the end they did fire me, but I fortunately landed in an excellent new role that doesn’t require a doctorate, so now I’m just finishing the PhD for myself.

Since the new PhD is entirely in this uncomfortable self-congratulatory register, I likely won’t post much from it here. But it’s taking up a big chunk of my extracurricular life, so figured I’d share it here.