Abstract

This article proposes recommendations for doctoral supervisors to create a new lexicon of quality through mentorship rooted in an ethics of care that deviates from abstraction and depersonalisation in scholarship when applying digital tools to humanistic questions for impact.

For generations, scholars in the humanities and social sciences have made specific decisions at specific times within specific disciplines to meet administrative and professional demands in academia. They have traced over their patterns to capture the vibrant, chaotic, and profoundly beautiful messiness of the world we live in, threading a line of thought laid down by those who came before, with research neatly placed in a qualitative box that contains specific forms and modes of inquiry and representation. It is like trying to measure the depth of the universe with a ruler from different perspectives over and over again for precision – it simply does not cut it. Joining a common thread in scholarship that yearns for an education that emancipates (Hooks, 1996; Freire, 2000), this article provides recommendations for doctoral supervisors on how to achieve freedom from narrow quality metrics in their mentorship through an ethics of care grounded in Full Stack Feminism.

Full Stack Feminism critically examines how power operates through technology stacks – data, archives, infrastructure, tools, and code – affecting access, experience, and knowledge integration (Webb, 2023). It digs deep into how academic stacks relate to and interact with technology stacks in this new, digitally saturated century to redefine scholarship with inclusive and diverse Digital Humanities (DH) approaches embedded within the communities we inhabit – both the communities affected by the subjects we study and the scholarly communities from which we study.

Deviating from the abstraction and depersonalisation in scholarship within the structural and systemic inequalities in academic institutions that DH set out to revolutionise a decade ago using a human-centric approach with digital and computational methods presents no minor challenge (McGrail et al., 2022). It is an act of rebellion that demands change for individual and collective liberation with a new lexicon of quality, one that speaks to the heart of what qualitative research can become when digital tools are applied to humanistic questions with impact.

Change needs care whilst attending to the bruises that emerge from moulding the misfitting (qualitative) box or shaping oneself to fit it, at times bearing the loneliness of seeing potential where others see impossibility. This article is rooted in the transformative mentorship that enacted change with ethics of care during my doctoral training. My supervisors have not explicitly labelled their approach as Full Stack Feminist mentorship or handed me a manual on what it is. One, a self-acknowledged Full Stack Feminist, and the other, equally impactful as a dedicated scholar and compassionate human being, together modelled a mentorship that represented the very essence of what they both strove to humanise in academia. Without an audience to perform to, our every interaction mattered, helping us build a relationship of trust, critical thinking, and creativity. From this tacit implementation emerged a tangible set of recommendations, now formalised in this short article as part of the Full Stack Feminism toolkit to guide others in their mentorship practices:

1.    Practise Slow Labour.

Doctoral training stands on double-layered power dynamics: between supervisor and supervisee and the privileging of certain qualitative methodologies over others, with its deep-rooted norms and expectations with data. The transition from an emerging researcher – bereft of an established reputation or extensive publications and conference appearances – to an emerging expert with a promising career progression carries a positional vulnerability. Supervisors hold institutional power to perpetually approve the visible and invisible curricula of the research and evaluate the doctoral researcher's ability to articulate and conform to the expected merit of their ideas and research contributions. The manner in which supervisors exercise this power, maintaining authority for compliance to academic rigor, dictates whether the trajectory of research follows established standards or ventures into the unknown with intellectual emancipation to create new ones. This is precisely where ideas outside the (qualitative) box about 'what could be' clash with the prevalent norms about 'what should be'.

For their mentorship to relish in the freedom of intellectual emancipation, supervisors must engage in painstakingly slow labour (Mountz et al., 2015). Only then is the discovery of the researcher's true potential in growing courage to expose the inequalities in operation across academic stacks without fear – from the moment they enter into a relationship with the researched as data subjects at the point of departure until the researched become subjects of scholarly data at the point of arrival – possible. Here, every interaction with the researcher's vulnerable self turns into a conscious and reflexive act that does not exercise power through the privileges bestowed upon supervisors by the structural and systemic inequalities in academia. They are prepared to get down and dirty with every single layer of the research process, embracing the messiness of it all, with ears tuned to the cacophony of complexities and entanglements while the research is redirected multiple times for its new uncertain course. The supervisory authority offers relentless joy, curiosity, and mutual growth through slow labour that attends to the bruises of change with care. It returns power to the doctoral researcher for a continuous review of what the research has become, with a reflexive yet vulnerable inquiry into what remains uncertain – what it is yet to become.

2.    Embrace Interdisciplinary Collaboration.

Scholarly data, rich in content, are dispersed across various disciplines, each defined by its unique focus, methodologies, and interpretations. Forms of interaction, discussions, or exchange of ideas among scholars who are 'disciplined' within pre-defined parameters and methodologies of their fields do not necessarily equate to integrative community practice that true collaboration requires. Full Stack  Feminism is about building together with a shared concern over issues related to inequalities in bias in DH that none could build alone (Full Stack Feminism in Digital Humanities, 2022). But new technologies emerge and become obsolete at a dizzying pace. Adopting a multi-, inter-, or cross-disciplinary approach can initially seem promising for a thorough understanding of these biases with diverse theoretical and practical aspects of the research topic. A solo researcher, limited by their immediate skill set, cannot possibly pursue every emerging technological trend or tool nor develop the broad expertise required for truly interdisciplinary research rooted in inclusivity and the unification of insights and skills from feminist theory, critical data studies, computer science, and beyond, both within and outside academia.

Several issues around collaboration – such as intellectual property, copyrights, anonymity and privacy, ethical standards, cultural and disciplinary differences –demand time, energy, and resources that can stretch the capacities of the doctoral researcher and challenge the various deadlines of a doctoral program. The risk of failure in terms of research outcomes and the ability to communicate their scholarly value and merit is real. However, these challenges, while risky, are crucial indicators pointing towards the necessity of collaborations to unlock the full potential of research. Supervisors need to abandon the pursuit of an idealised vision of seamless disciplinary integration by a lone researcher in favour of a dynamic and inclusive academic practice on pathways marked by uncertainty.

3.    Evaluate Justice in Inquiry and Representation.

Full Stack Feminism is an intervention on behalf of the ignored, excluded, and forgotten in technology, critically examining and challenging the patterns of power and exclusion perpetuated through data practices in society at large. At the heart of this intervention is D'Ignazio and Klein's 'Data Feminism,' an educational tool that introduces fundamental concepts of both feminism and data science, sparking important conversations about the ethical implications of data work for educators, students, policymakers, and technology professionals across all fields (D'Ignazio & Klein, 2020). Collecting data on marginalisation for research purposes means bearing "witness to the testimony" collected during research inquiries, which necessitates action toward "finding justice" (McKay, 2000, p. 564). This responsibility also implies the need to condemn how power is exercised through scholarly data across academic stacks, affecting those for whom justice is sought.

Full Stack Feminism does not merely swan in and out to capture snapshots of the real life of the marginalised by comparing available options with instrumental aims; it is deliberate in questioning: Who else could technology serve? What else could it do? How does it need to be repurposed to address the complex needs, dignity, autonomy, and agency of those being researched with sensitivity, respect, and care across all academic stacks? In this context, supervisors play a crucial role in shaping how doctoral researcher approaches justice. They become active participants in critically questioning the traditional ethics framework of 'doing no harm' by urging the researcher to consider: Does my research replicate the unjust structures I aim to confront? Why am I conducting this research, and for whom? In other words, whilst writing papers, participating in conferences, or producing ‘innovative’ doctoral projects that use technology may assist the researcher as the primary beneficiary of the Ph.D. award, it is insufficient for those experiencing marginalisation.

Until the day arrives when the institutional bases in academia around issues of metric-oriented research outcomes, collaboration, and justice in inquiry and representation move from the margins to the central vista of the main library shelves, we have Full Stack Feminism as a reference point to redefine what it means to pursue or mentor meaningful and impactful research in doctoral training. This mentorship will not be a quaint academic exercise based on the three aspirational recommendations put forth here. Instead, it will be a critical and collective endeavour with each doctoral supervision process writing its own practice in a world that is hungry for depth, not just outcomes with data. Doctoral researchers will need to trust in their vulnerability as their most powerful tool. And supervisors must be willing to engage with the researcher's unique vulnerability as a site where a valuable contribution to change can emerge through the discovery of these tools.

Real-world constraints, including varying administrative restrictions in higher education that quantify the quality of mentorship may obviously limit the implementation of these ideals to minimal paid time allocated for doctoral supervision, hardly reflecting the depth of engagement required for truly transformative scholarship. This reality points to a broader institutional challenge beyond the scope of this article: the need for a re-evaluation of how doctoral training is supported within the current context of defunding universities in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world. The full potential of these recommendations may be limited, yet they remain a vital aspiration, guiding not only the doctoral experience toward a more inclusive and equitable future but academia as a whole.

Acknowledgments

The mentorship of my doctoral supervisors, Cécile Chevalier and Anke Schwittay, was a vivid demonstration of the power of dedicated scholarship in action resisting structural and systemic inequalities in academic institutions. It is their model of supervision that animates the recommendations within these pages for all who aspire to mentor with care.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D'Ignazio, C. and Klein, L.F. (2020) Data feminism. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Freire, P. (2000) Pedagogy of the oppressed. 30th anniversary ed. New York: Continuum.

Full Stack Feminism in Digital Humanities (2022) [Power Point] Archiving bodies: Digital archives, feminist and queer praxis, Seminar: Maynooth University Arts and Humanities Institute, Ireland.

Hooks, B. (1996) 'Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom', Journal of Leisure Research, 28(4), 316.

McGrail, AB, Nieves, AD, & Senier, S (eds) (2022) People, practice, power: digital humanities outside the center. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Mckay, S. (2000) 'Gender justice and reconciliation', Women's studies international forum, 23(5), pp. 561-570. doi: 10.1016/S0277-5395(00)00129-1.

Mountz, A., Bonds, A., Mansfield, B., Loyd, J., Hyndman, J., Walton-Roberts, M., ... & Curran, W. (2015) 'For slow scholarship: A feminist politics of resistance through collective action in the neoliberal university', ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 14(4), 1235-1259.

Webb, S. (2023), 'Defining Full Stack Feminism', Full Stack Feminism Overview and Methodologies. doi:https://doi.org/10.21428/6094d7d2.b65d448a