PhD Program in Communication
Our faculty consider communication to be a contested concept that is shaped by different intellectual traditions, societal contexts, and historical developments. We encourage our students to embrace interdisciplinarity and expand the existing horizons of the field in their research. Our faculty and graduate students strive to produce imaginative, reflexive, and critical studies of communication that deepen knowledge, expand horizons, and respond to significant societal concerns. This requires a collegial and supportive environment, which we work to achieve with every new cohort of PhD students. Providing effective mentorship and professional development opportunities are crucial to our success as a program.
Our PhD Program in Communication begins with two semesters of coursework followed by the first comprehensive exam based on the year-long Doctoral Seminar course. The Doctoral Seminar is co-taught by two faculty members and provides a deep theoretical foundation in the field. The next step is the second comprehensive exam which involves preparing and defending a literature review related to the field in which the student plans to write their thesis. By this time students have formalized their relationship with a supervisor and they work together with two other committee members to complete and defend this work. During the third year of study, the committee oversees the student’s preparation and defence of their dissertation proposal. At this point the student is well prepared to conduct their research and can begin to write their dissertation. The program is designed to be completed within a five year period.
For more information, we encourage you to explore our PhD Communication Program Information (click on a course code to see descriptions) and our Graduate Handbook. Once enrolled, students can also consider joining the Specialization in Political Economy if that corresponds to their research interests.
Of the students who have completed their PhD in our program to date, over three-quarters are currently teaching in Canadian universities with others employed in the cultural policy sector and related areas. Find out more about our graduate’s career pathways, our faculty’s areas of expertise, our campus and student life or go on a virtual tour of Carleton.
Research
Faculty and students are involved in several hubs of research activity including the ALiGN Media Lab, RoCCET Lab and Comic Cons Research Project, the Canadian Media Concentration Research Project, the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, Populist Publics, and the Transgender Media Lab.
Funding and Scholarships
Top-ranked candidates are offered generous financial support from Carleton University. Our PhD students have access to teaching assistantships (TA), research assistantships (RA), and have been very successful at obtaining funding through the Vanier Scholarship, Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS), and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) fellowships. Students also have access to various internal awards, including Donor-Funded Awards and Graduate Student Travel / Research Bursaries.
Our department also awards the following endowments:
- Sons of Maxwell: Awarded annually to one undergraduate and one graduate student in financial need who demonstrates strong academic achievement and community service. Endowed in 2017 by Dave Carroll.
- McKeown: Awarded annually to a doctoral student in memory of Robert McKeown’s career as a journalist of national stature. Eligible students must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents who have a background as a working journalist or whose research focuses on the news media or journalism practice.
Admissions
Our program normally admits 5-7 new students each year on a competitive basis. Apply now to receive early consideration for admission. Admissions are open until the program is filled or February 1.
Admission is on a competitive basis and applicants should, by the time they enter the program, have completed an MA degree in Communication or a related area of study with a GPA of at least 10.0 or A- as calculated at Carleton. Our application requires you to provide contact details for two academic referees who can comment on your academic background. You will also prepare a 2-5 page, double-spaced statement of intent telling us why you would like to join our PhD program, your research interests and their relevance to communication studies, and any other information that will help us understand your goals and motivations. Finally, your curriculum vitae (CV/Resumé), a sample of written work (usually a graduate essay), and your academic transcripts. Click here for more information about how to apply.
Are you an international student?
We are excited to welcome international students to our program! Alongside faculty and students with international backgrounds who already contribute to our program, many of us also collaborate with scholars from across the world. Cross-cultural perspectives enrich our conversations about communication and media studies and influence how we conduct our research.
Despite our enthusiasm, we must also face the reality that funding for international students is inadequate. While we continue to advocate for change, it is critical that all prospective international applicants are well informed of the financial obstacles they may face. It is for these reasons that we provide the following information.
- The process for PhD applicants is highly competitive and we typically only accept 1 student per year. We usually have one funding package available, but it is limited in scope and the university does not waive tuition fees.
If you are looking for more information about tuition fees and expenses, please use these websites and select ‘All other PhD programs.’ Note that rent is only listed here for a period of 8 months and many leases are for 12 months and application fees are not refundable. Find out more about admission requirements, including English proficiency test scores.
PhD Graduates
The PhD Program in Communication began in September 1997 with five students, four full-time and one part-time. Since then, between five and eight new students have joined the program each year from across Canada and around the world.
Since 2003, when the program had its first graduates, the following students have received their doctorates in Communication.
2023
Brandon Rigato
Thesis: Malicious Enclaves: Racism, Hate, and Violence in Social Media Use of Right Wing Extremists in Canada
Siyu (Rainie) Wang
Thesis: “Loitering” with Unconcerned Clicks: Class Nature and Social Exclusion of Sina Weibo Users in Representing Chinese Migrant Workers
2022
Nasreen Rajani
Thesis: “Our Experiences are Different…Our Risks are Different”: Racialized Women’s Online Activism to End Violence Against Women in Canada
Kathy Dobson
Thesis: Living in Algorithmic Governance : A Study in the Digital Governance of Social Assistance in Ontario
Nadia Hai
Thesis: Framing the Western Jihad : A Grounded Theory Analysis of Inspire, Dabiq, and Rumiyah Magazines
Melodie Cardin
Thesis: “As Long as It’s Healthy…” : Prenatal Health, Disability and Biopower
2021
Jess Ring
Thesis: Re-Tooling the Sisterhood: Conceptualizing ‘Meaningful Making’ through Maker Culture, Makerspace Politics, and Feminist ‘little m’ making-as-activism
Lowell Gasoi
Thesis: Singing for Our Supper : Performative Advocacy in Canadian Art Worlds
2020
Derek Antoine
Thesis: Spinning Violence: Examining Competing Discourses of State Force and Indigenous Identity in Mi’kma’ki, 2013
Gabriela Capurro
Thesis: ‘Superbugs’ and the ‘Dirty Hospital’: The Social Co-Production of Public Health Risks
Simon Vodrey
Thesis: Revisiting the Contemporary Flow of Influence in Political Marketing
2018
Stanislav Budnitskiy
Thesis: Digital Nationalism: Identity, Strategic Communication, and Global Internet Governance
Emily Hiltz
Thesis: The Notorious Woman: Tracing the Production of Alleged Female Killers through Discourse, Image, and Speculation
2017
Ebere Ahanihu
Thesis: Digitizing Failure: Development and Power in Nigerian e-Schools
Ghadah Alrasheed
Thesis: Tweeting Towards Utopia: Technological Utopianism and Academic Discourse on Political movements in the Middle East and North Africa
Suzanne Waldman
Thesis: Taking Risk Seriously: Discourses and Worldviews in a Nuclear Waste Controversy
Sherry Wasilow
Thesis: Contemporary Canadian Military/Media Relations: Embedded reporting during the Afghanistan War
2016
Christy Mady
Thesis: The Status of Women News Journalists in Lebanese Television: A Field-Gender Approach
Derek Noon
Thesis: Negotiating a Quantum Computation Network: Mechanics, Machines, Mindsets
2015
Reisa Klein
Thesis: Beauty Marks: Counter-hegemonic Power of the Body?
2014
Emily Truman
Thesis: Back to the political future: coping with crisis through radical nostalgia for revolutionary icons
2013
Ezra Winton
Thesis: Good for the Heart and Soul, Good for Business: The Cultural Politics of Documentary at the Hot Docs Film Festival
Vincent Raynauld
Thesis: The perfect political storm? The Tea Party movement, the redefinition of the digital political mediascape, and the birth of online politicking 3.0
William Fox
Thesis: Lazarsfeld, Merton and Markets: Case Studies of Media Effects Theories As Applied to Financial Reporting and Financial Markets
Bernard Gauthier
Thesis: Drawing Professional Boundaries: Professional organizations, Communication and interprofessional collaboration in health care
2012
Michael Lithgow
Thesis: Beautiful & Ambiguous News: An Aesthetic Approach to the Limits of Discursive “Truth”
Rhonda Walker-Sisttie
Thesis: The 2005 Canadian Same-Sex Marriage Debate: A Case Study Examining How the Press Presented the Parliamentary Debate on Bill C-38
Brian Gorman
Thesis: Dialectic of Gloom: How the press survived the great Recession of 2008, after slashing its wrists and writings its own obituary
2011
Wendy Quinlan-Gagnon
Thesis: Communication and the Changing Roles of Public Art Museums: Lessons for Museum Professionals
Irina Mihalache
Thesis: Communicating History: Forgetting Colonialism at the Institut du Monde Arabe
Howard Fremeth
Thesis: Memory, Militarism and Citizenship: Tracking the Dominion Institute in Canada’s Military-Cultural Memory Network
2010
Ning Du
Thesis: Shadows of Traditions: Discourse Shifts on the Rule of Law and China’s Modernity
Georgina Grosenick
Thesis: Strategic Outcomes and Public Understanding: the Goals, Contexts, and Strategies of Non-Profit Advocacy Surrounding Issues of Homelessness in Four Canadian Cities
2009
Claire Harrison
Thesis: Dipping into the Social Imaginary:The Role of Narrative Reference in Public Debate
Sara Bannerman
Thesis: Canada and the Berne Convention 1886-1971
John Shiga
Thesis: Reproductive Anxiety: Reconfiguring the Human in Virtual Culture
Jason Hannan
Thesis: Moral Discourse in a World After Virtue Communication and Dialogue in the Thought of Alasdair MacIntyre
2008
Carrie Buchanan
Thesis: A Changing Sense of Place in Canadian Daily Newspapers: 1894-2005
Marc-André Piegon
Thesis: The Depoliticization of Canada’s Economic Discourse
Joseph K. Ngare
Thesis: Neoliberal Global Governance: How International Development Organizations Transform East African Mediascapes
Aliaa Ibrahim Dakroury
Thesis: PRESENT AT THE CREATION: The Telecommission Studies and the Intellectual Origins of the Right to Communicate in Canada (1969-71)
Christopher Bodnar
Thesis: Taking It To The Streets: Space, Labour and Resistance in the Vancouver and Paris Film Industries from 1970 to 2005
Jaffer Sheyholislami
Thesis: Identity, Discourse, and the Media: the Case of the Kurds
2007
Faiza Hirji Kassam
Thesis: Resistance is Futile: Indian Cinema and Identity Construction Among Young South Asian Canadians of Muslim and Other Backgrounds
Paula Romanow
Thesis: The Costal Communities Network: Community Development, the Internet, and Cultural Change in Rural Nova Scotia
2006
Ian Nagy
Thesis: Conspiracy and the Logic of Capital
2005
Valerie Steeves
Thesis: Beyond Data Protection: Applying Mead’s Symbolic Interactionalism and Habermas’s Communicative Action to Westin’s Theory of Privacy
Anne-Marie Kinahan
Thesis: “A Splendid Army of Organized Womanhood” Gender, Communication and the National Council of Women of Canada, 1893-1918
2004
Jason Bristow
Thesis: Canada and the Cultural Trade Quandary: Rethinking National Identity, Economic Liberalization, and Policy Capacity
Sandra Smeltzer
Thesis: Myths of ITCs and Progress in Malaysia
Derek Foster
Thesis: Squeegee kids: A study of successful scapegoating, 1995-2001
Mahmoud Eid
Thesis: Interweavement — Building a Crisis Decision-Making Model for Rational Responsibility in the Media: International Communication, Political Crisis Management, and the Use of Mathematics
2003
Peter Hodgins
Thesis: The Canadian Dream-Work: History, Myth and Nostalgia in the Heritage Minutes
Kirsten Kozolanka
Thesis: Political Communication and Construction of the Neo-Liberal Hegemonic Project: Ontario in Transition, 1995-1997
Pat Mazepa
Thesis: Battles on the Cultural Front: The (De)Labouring of Culture in Canada, 1914-1944
Charlene Elliott
Thesis: Colour Codification: Law, Culture and the Hue of Communication