About Us

Since 2010, Dissertation Reviews has featured more than 1000 overviews of recently defended, unpublished doctoral dissertations in a wide variety of disciplines across the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our goal is to offer readers a glimpse of each discipline’s immediate present by focusing on the window of time between dissertation defense and first book publication.

Each review provides a summary of the author’s main arguments, the historiographic genealogy in which the author operates, and the main source bases for his or her research. The reviews are also anticipatory, making educated assessments of how the research will advance or challenge our understanding of major issues in the field when it is revised and published in the future.

In addition to the public, non-critical review that is published on the site, authors also receive private, critical commentary from their reviewers designed to help authors during the manuscript revision process. Critical comments are not published on the site or circulated in any way. They are expressly for the author.

Reviews form the bedrock of our project and we’re very proud of the immense work and dedication of our reviewers, writers and editors. Below is a map of these reviews mapped by Ph.D. institution. Please note that many universities have multiple reviews. When you click on of one them, you will see a > symbol and indication of the number of reviews from that university (1 of 23, for example). Scroll through the reviews using the > arrow. Click on “More info” to read any of the reviews.

One of the most popular features on Dissertation Reviews is our Fresh From the Archives series. These are timely and informative portraits of archival holdings and other primary sources. They include insights from scholars who have recently worked with those materials and act as a collective repository of experiences in the archives. Here is a map of our current Fresh From the Archives posts. Click on one of the points on the map to read the post:

We are a community of 29 Field Editors located across the globe. The map below shows the locations, editors and titles of our current fields.

 

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