Category: part-time phd
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Making: A Feminist Praxis at DH@Guelph 2025
What happens when feminist theory meets hands-on creativity? When cross-stitching becomes a form of resistance? When poetry film and zine-making turn into tools for dissent? Last week, I co-led a four-day workshop on feminist making at the DH@Guelph Summer Workshops. Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s call for a feminist survival kit in Living a Feminist Life,…
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DH@Guelph Summer Workshops 2024
From May 14th-17th, 2024, I attended the DH@Guelph Summer Workshops 2024. This year, I took the “Introduction to Python” course. Here’s some of what we learned. Dr. Paul Barrett was our instructor. The first day, he taught us how to use Jupyter Notebooks (which I’d used once before), and gave us a basic introduction to…
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Congress 2023: ACCUTE and CSDH Presentations
From May 27-31, 2023, I had the pleasure of attending Congress 2023 at York University, where I presented at the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE) and the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities (CSDH). My ACCUTE presentation was part of a panel on Social Media Lit. I presented my dissertation research…
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DH@Guelph Summer Workshops 2023 – Introduction to Voyant
The DH@Guelph Summer Workshops returned in-person from May 9-12th, 2023. This year, I was invited to lead a workshop on Introduction to Voyant Tools. Voyant Tools is a web-based text reading and analysis environment that allows you to work with your own text or collection of texts. During the workshop, I led participants through an…
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Tips for Passing your Ph.D. Qualifying Exams
In January 2022, I passed my Ph.D. qualifying exam and officially became a Ph.D. Candidate. For those who aren’t familiar with the Ph.D. process, this means that I am ABD, which stands for “All but dissertation.” This means that all that’s left in my program is for me to write and defend my dissertation. A…
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Presentation: Close Reading the Sonic Topology of Instagram Poetry with Poemage
On May 16-17th, 2022, I attended the SpokenWeb Symposium 2022 at Concordia University in Montreal on the theme of “The Sound of Literature in Time.” My presentation was titled “Close Reading the Sonic Topology of Instagram Poetry with Poemage”. In the presentation, I show how Poemage, an open-source visualization tool for exploring the sonic topology…
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How to get a Research Assistant position
When I started my Ph.D. as a part-time student, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to accept my Teaching Assistant (TA) positions given my other responsibilities: a full-time 9-5 job, extracurriculars, course work and my own research, and spending time with my friends and families. At the time, there weren’t many opportunities…
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How to write a conference abstract
This year, I am the Graduate Placement Officer (GPO) representative for our graduate student committee, which generally means that I work with our GPO to organize and host professionalization workshops for graduate students. As part of this role, last semester I organized and led a workshop on how to write a conference abstract. Here are…
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Top 9 tips for incoming PhD students
Summer is winding down in Canada which, for anyone in academia, means we are gearing up for another school year—and welcoming another incoming cohort of PhD students. I’ve been reflecting on my first year in the program lately and have been speaking with some of my PhD friends about what we wish we’d known heading…
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Reflections on my first comprehensive exam
Last semester, I finished my fifth and final course required for my PhD at the University of Guelph. The fall before (Fall 2019), I passed my written and oral exams for my Secondary Area Qualifications. Here are some of my reflections on the comprehensive exam now that I’m about halfway through the program. Secondary Area…
Kiera Obbard 