The Dissertation Award Committee also decided to award the runner-up prize ex-aequo to the works of Miao Lu, “Deep Ploughing: A Mobile Phone Company’s Technology Translation Between China and Ghana” (Chinese U of Hong Kong), and Rachel van der Merwe, “We Are Not South African: Decolonizing National Identity in a Post-Apartheid State” (U of Colorado Boulder). The committee noted that Lu’s work excels in “originality and detail”, while van der Merwe’s dissertation was praised for being “a delightful piece of writing” that “theorizes from South Africa in the era of digital media.”
The quality and number of submissions for this award made the decision particularly difficult this year, the committee noted. The members of the committee also noted that the works submitted were excellent examples of research with a global perspective that seek to recenter the study of communication phenomena outside geographic spaces that have prevailed in the discipline in the past, and to challenge the established canons in the study of global communication and social change.
The Best Dissertation Award committee consisted of Prof. Radhika Gajjala, Bowling Green State U, Dr. Leah Komen, Daystar U, and Dr. Prashanth Bhat, Eastern Connecticut State U, and was chaired the Division’s Secretary, Dr. Dani Madrid-Morales, The U of Sheffield.
More details about the Best Dissertation Awards can be found at https://ica-gcsc.org/awards/best-gcsc-dissertation-award