Audiobooks and Australian Literary Culture PhD Scholarship

Applications are invited for a PhD scholarship in literary studies. The scholarship is supported by the Australian National University (ANU) and is part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA). 

Audiobooks and Digital Book Culture: Australian Books and Publishing at a Time of Global Disruption is an ARC supported study of contemporary Australian audiobooks and their social, cultural, economic and technological contexts. One of the study’s major contributions is a comprehensive database of Australian audiobook titles. The database will be produced in collaboration with and integrated into AustLit, the national database of biographical, bibliographical, and critical information about Australian writing. This data will be combined with library circulation data, sociological studies with authors, narrators and general and vision-impaired readers, and close reading of select audiobook titles, to provide a rich and nuanced understanding of how audiobooks are changing practices of reading, publishing and writing. 

The PhD candidate will develop an independent project within this larger context, and will be encouraged to make use of the project’s title database and library circulation data, alongside other sources of data including print bibliographic data collated by AustLit, Australian public library holdings, and ISBN databases. 

Possible areas for investigation might include:

• Australian audiobooks produced for vision impaired and print disabled readers; 
• The history of Australian audiobook publishing, circulation and/or reading in the twentieth century; or
• Computational or data-rich approaches to the study of audiobooks. 

The PhD will be supervised by Dr Millicent Weber at the ANU together with an interdisciplinary team of researchers as appropriate to the specific focus of the PhD project, with the PhD thus offering skills training in critical thinking, writing, digital humanities, data analysis, and bibliography, as appropriate. The successful candidate will be affiliated with the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics (SLLL), which has a thriving English program and interdisciplinary research culture including expertise across these areas, and the ANU Centre for Australian Literary Culture (CALC), Humanities Research Centre (HRC), and newly formed ANU Digital Hub.

The successful applicant will also have the opportunity to work closely with the project’s industry partners, which include the Australian Publishers’ Association (APA); Small Press Network (SPN); Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA); Vision Australia (VA); and the Australian Sound Recording Association (ASRA).

Applicants are encouraged to contact Dr Millicent Weber at millicent.weber@anu.edu.au to discuss their research proposal prior to applying.