Resilient Scholarship in the Digital Age

Abstract

This paper addresses the nature of digital scholarship and discusses the challenges for digitally engaged researchers in archaeology and elsewhere who find that the move to digital scholarship alters the terms of engagement in both the institutional and the personal context. For example, digital methods can counterintuitively lead to increased workloads and expectations of availability, and they are frequently linked to managerialism and marketisation of scholarship. Paradoxically, digital scholarship can entail both a tightening of control through forms of surveillance and an increase in freedom to work in places and at times of choice. This gives rise to a heightened experience of stress and insecurity, and so this paper will argue for the need for resilience in scholarship, not at the institutional level where business resilience approaches are already applied, but at the community and individual level, to benefit most those who experience the risks and downsides associated with digital scholarship.