My PhD defence
After years of toil in the archives and plenty of writer’s block and rewrites, I’m pleased to announce that my PhD thesis is ready to strike out on its own. On March 2 2017 I’ll defend my thesis in front of a committee of scholars in the History Department at York University. Around the table will be: Marcel Martel, Marlene Shore, and Colin Coates (all historians and my supervisors), social and labour historian Craig Heron, urban sociologist and political scientist Roger Keil, and, from the University of Sherbrooke, urban historian Harold Bérubé.
All are welcome at this public defence, which begins at 3:30pm and will last around two hours. The format is somewhat unique to academia: the committee, and especially two scholars who have read my work for the first time this winter, will ask me questions about it, and I will defend my research questions and answers, inclusions and exclusions. From my perspective, it’s a chance to share my PhD work with six scholars I greatly respect, and, if all goes well, receive useful critical feedback on the project.
You can read more about my Yonge Street history project, including the dissertation abstract, here. I’m also happy to share the project with people interested in attending the defence.
Daniel Ross 