Chair: Daniel Powell is a PhD student at the University of Victoria, as well as a researcher in the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab directed by Dr. Raymond G. Siemens, Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing. His research takes place at the intersection of digital humanities, new media, textuality, and early modern studies. He has organized panels for and presented on digital editions of early modern manuscript miscellanies, how digital tools are impacting the study of literary materials, and on graduate education in the humanities in the digital age. His work has appeared in or is in consideration by MLA Commons (_Literary Studies in a Digital Age: A Methodological Primer_), _Digital Studies / Le Champ Numérique_, and Iter/MRTS. Current projects include, with Melissa Dalgleish, a collection of essays within the #alt-academy project centered on graduate education in the digital age, as well as the development of the Renaissance English Knowledgebase (REKn), the early modern node of the ARC system based at Texas A&M University. Further information here: http://djp2025.com/
Nick van Orden is a PhD student in the English and Film Studies program at the University of Alberta. His research interests include the collision of digital spaces and literary forms. His MA thesis, “The Cyber-Performative in Second Life” (University of Victoria, 2010), focused on the performativity of human and machine-readable languages in the virtual world _Second Life_. Building on this work, his dissertation explores the interplay between fictional, digital, and real spaces, and the impact that this interplay has on reading practices and the production of literary texts. Nick is a research assistant with the Editing Modernism in Canada (EMiC) project at the U of A.
James O’Sullivan is a PhD candidate in Digital Arts & Humanities at University College Cork, where he studies cultural theory under Professor Graham Allen and Dr. Órla Murphy. He holds qualifications in both technology and cultural studies, and has published in a number of scholarly publications on a variety of topics. James has also led the development of a number of digital tools and resources, most notably, _OpenDAHT_, _Digitate_, _DigitalPoe.org_ and _Literary Cork_. He is also involved with Art|Works, a collaborative initiative aimed at providing a platform upon which relationships within the creative arts and industries might be fostered and developed. Further information on James and his research can be found at josullivan.org.
Nick Sousanis is an interdisciplinary doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, writing and drawing his dissertation entirely in comic book form – the first of its kind. Its very form embodies his argument for the importance of visual thinking in teaching and learning. Before coming to NYC, he was immersed in Detroit’s thriving arts community, where he co-founded the arts and cultural web-mag _The Detroiter_ (www.thedetroiter.com); served as the founding director of the University of Michigan’s Work:Detroit exhibition space, and became the biographer of legendary Detroit artist Charles McGee. His comics have been infiltrating the academic realm through numerous publications and he furthers his advocacy for the medium as a powerful tool for thought in the comics course he developed for educators at Teachers College. Excerpts from his dissertation and other comics are online here: www.spinweaveandcut.com.
Melissa Dalgleish is a PhD candidate (ABD) at York University. She is also a special graduate assistant to the Faculty of Graduate Studies for 2012-2013, developing a transferrable skills training program for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. She has recently presented papers on alt-ac and graduate reform at the Sorbonne and the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities (CSDH), one of which is forthcoming as the collaborative essay “Conversation, Collaboration, Credit: The Graduate Researcher in the Digital Scholarly Environment.” With Daniel Powell, she currently has a collection of essays under consideration with _MediaCommons_ that will explore alt-ac (alternate academic employment, alternative academies, altering the academy) from the perspective of graduate students across Europe and North America. She has presented her work on digital humanities project design, which also considers the relationship between digital humanities and post-PhD employment, at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute and the CSDH; an essay which more fully theorizes this relationship—“Editing Modules, Collecting Editions: The Present and Future of Small-Scale Digital Editions”—is forthcoming in _Editing Modernism: Textual Scholarship and New Media_. She is also the editor of the Editing Modernism in Canada-funded digital edition of Canadian poet Anne Wilkinson’s _Counterpoint to Sleep_, co-founding editor of the peer-reviewed _Pivot: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and Thought_, and the author of numerous articles and biographies about Canadian modernist poets and poetics.
Danielle Spinosa is a PhD student (ABD) in the English Department at York University. Her research interests include feminist theories, experimental poetry and the history of the avant-garde, and postanarchism Her doctoral thesis, an interactive project entitled [generic pronoun] creates: Anarchism, Authorship, Experiment (which can be found at genericpronoun.com) works to incorporate feedback from readers who respond via comments, envisioning the dissertation as a communal and potentially activist project. She is also a co-editor of York English’s interdisciplinary journal, Pivot.