Janneke Adema
Description
"I am a Research Fellow in Digital Media at Coventry University, with a PhD in Media (Coventry University) and a background in History (MA) and Philosophy (MA) (both University of Groningen) and Book and Digital Media Studies (MA) (Leiden University). My PhD thesis focuses on the future of the scholarly book in the humanities. I have been conducting research for the OAPEN project, and subsequently the OAPEN foundation, from 2008 until 2013 (including research for OAPEN-NL and DOAB). My research for OAPEN focused on user needs and publishing models concerning Open Access books in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
I have published in among others New Formations; The International Journal of Cultural Studies; New Media & Society; New Review of Academic Librarianship; Krisis. Journal for Contemporary Philosophy; and LOGOS. The Journal of the World Book Community, and I have co-edited a living book on Symbiosis together with Pete Woodbridge (Open Humanities Press, 2011).
My thesis was supervised by Gary Hall (Coventry University) and Sarah Kember (Goldsmiths College, University of London), and critically explores: how knowledge is created (produced, distributed and consumed); how we as scholars are involved in knowledge creation; and at how we can create alternatives to the present system. In doing so it focuses on the function of the academic author, the political-economy of scholarly book publishing, and the stability and fixity of the scholarly book object. My analysis consists of an exploration of publishing experiments that engage with collaborative, anonymous and remixed authorship, open access publishing and open peer review, and liquid, living and remixed scholarship. I argue that even those who are lobbying for a shift to a more open, digital book, almost invariably end up replicating many of the features associated with print (for reasons of stability, authority, quality etc.). A large part of the originality of my project lies with the way it constitutes both a theoretical and practical intervention in the debate on the future of the book. Through a methodology of ‘critical praxis’, I performed and continue to perform my thesis in an alternative, digital, and open way, like I do here on Openreflections. My research can be followed online as it develops, and features a variety of different, remixed, multimodal and multiplatform versions. In other words, it constitutes a performative and interventionist approach, where through experimentation I actively critique and rethink ‘natural’ communication practices, to explore to what extent an open online book is possible that does not simply replicate the printed codex book." (https://openreflections.wordpress.com/about/)