Friday the 13th of December this year was a day of achievement and celebration. Our PhD student Linda Berube had her viva voce examination and was awarded a PhD with minor corrections in Human-Computer Interaction Design!
Her thesis, titled “Digital Comics Ecosystems: Investigating creation, publishing, consumption and communication practices”, was supervised as part of a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) between City, University of London and The British Library.
The supervisory team was composed of Yours Truly and Stephann Makri from City and Ian Cooke and Stella Wisdom from the BL.
(To learn more about the CDP, see Priego, Ernesto; Berube, Linda; de la Mora, Francisco; Cooke, Ian; Makri, Stephann; Wisdom, Stella (2023). UK Digital Comics: Challenges and Opportunities of a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership. A Co-designed Comic Poster. figshare. Poster. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22717675.v2).
Professor Jason Dykes chaired the viva examination. The internal examiner was Dr Dominic Davies from the School of Communication and Creativity. The external examiner was Dr Francesca Benatti from The Open University. Thank you all!
It’s always a risk to try to summarise somebody else’s PhD, even if you worked with them for several years, but I will give it a go. Linda’s dissertation explores the dynamic ecosystem of digital comics, focusing on the interactions between creators, publishers, and readers within the UK digital comics landscape. It highlights the transformative impact of digital technologies on the creation, production, distribution, and consumption of comics. Employing a user-centred, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) approach, she looked into the sociocultural and technological dimensions of digital comics through empirical research and qualitative analysis.
Linda’s research identifies digital comics as distinct forms shaped by unique affordances of creators, publishers, and readers, emphasising their integration within broader digital ecosystems. It examines the complex workflows and processes used by creators to navigate evolving publishing technologies and diverse platforms, revealing adaptive and experimental practices. Her work also underscores the nuanced relationship between digital and print media, challenging assumptions about distinct comics communities by framing them as interconnected ecosystems that blend digital and analogue modalities.
Importantly, Linda’s PhD dissertation also addresses the experiential aspects of digital comics, exploring how materiality and embodiment influence reader engagement. It reveals how technology fosters communication and community among stakeholders, enabling new forms of interaction and reshaping traditional publishing paradigms. Her work makes a contribution to a digital sociology of comics, proposing a framework that bridges theoretical insights with practical implications for the digital age.
Linda’s thesis concludes by emphasising the importance of understanding digital comics not as isolated entities but as integrative elements of personalised digital ecosystems, reflecting the broader post-digital paradigm of interconnected human-technology relationships.
The examiners called Linda’s dissertation “astonishing” and “groundbreaking”. I am of course biased, but I believe this assessment is completely justified.
As her first supervisor, I could not be happier for Linda. I am really pleased that even though some minor revisions still need to be done, this collaborative partnership has resulted in a successful PhD. An excellent way to wrap up our academic year.
Many congratulations, Linda, and happy holidays everyone!
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