Doctoral memes as public pedagogy? Or, heaven knows I’m miserable now
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21458762 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Patricia Thomson (0000-0002-4801-0000, University of Nottingham, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 109-127 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Continuing Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0158-037X • E-ISSN: 1470-126X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0158037x.2024.2417095 |
| OpenAlex | W4403516320 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 82 |
Social media afford the proliferation of doctoral memes across numerous, generally anonymous, accounts spread over multiple platforms – the timeline where the PhD candidate starts off gleaming with health and beaming in delight and ends up an overweight, dishevelled wreck. Or the exhausted cat who has managed to write one line of their thesis in an entire day. But should these memes be a cause for concern? After all, it’s just humour, albeit somewhat dark. My exploratory thematic analysis of a corpus of 292 doctoral memes and a theorisation of memes as public pedagogy, point to strong resonances between the memes and research on the doctoral experience. This enhances their credibility as a source of information. Based on the analysis, I suggest we might seriously examine doctoral meme-based learning, focusing on the potential of their gallows humour to support identity formation, community building, coping and wellbeing. Memes may be small but could potentially do useful work for both doctoral researchers and their supervisors
Heaven · Media studies · Pedagogy · Sociology · Theology · Doctoral Education Challenges and Solutions · Evaluation of Teaching Practices · Higher Education Practises and Engagement · Philosophy
The Forgotten Subject
Remix
A Geopolitics Of Academic Writing
Handbook of Public Pedagogy
The Content Analysis Guidebook
The World Made Meme
Contribution of the doctoral education environment to PhD candidates’ mental health problems
Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students
“Damn I Didn’t Know Y’all Was Sad? I Thought It Was Just Memes”
What do you meme? – Meme-Making as a research method
Building participatory counternarratives
Where’s the validation? Role of emotion work and validation for doctoral students
Getting social
Knowledge and Identity Work in the Supervision of Doctoral Student Writing
‘Making It’ as a Contract Researcher
The Discursive Power of Memes in Digital Culture
Researching Education from the Inside
Supervisory feedback to postgraduate research students
The “double-edged sword” effect of social media usage on postgraduate student creativity
Content and context in knowledge production
Remaking the #Syllabus
Liquid subjects
Gallows humour in social work practice
Political News in the News Feed
Intercultural doctoral supervision
Memes as genre
Healthy humour
Thematic analysis
Content Analysis of the World Wide Web
Shitposting as public pedagogy
The Role of Humour in the Social Care Professions
Learning about humour
Becoming public
Precarious careers
Juggling identities in interviews
Sociological Work
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |