Ph.D. in Digital Media Studies

The Georgia Tech Digital Media Ph.D. provides both the theoretical and the practical foundation for careers as digital media researchers in academia and industry. The advent of a new medium of human communication and representation is a significant event in human social and cultural history, and introduces the possibility of new genres of artistic expression as well as new forms of information and knowledge transmission. The study of these new forms - from the point of view of the creators and the analysts - is an emerging field, one that requires a convergence of the methodologies of several traditional disciplines, and one that is also defining its own methodologies of research and practice.

Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Communication, and Culture (LCC) is offering a Ph.D. in Digital Media. The program, one of the first of its kind worldwide, is aimed at educating research-oriented theorist/practitioners who will bring the traditions of the humanities and arts to the design of digital media.

Graduates of the program will be prepared to work in industry, public service, and universities, where they will help to shape the emerging digital genres and to expand our understanding and mastery of the representational power of the computer.

The new Ph.D. builds on the success of LCC’s internationally recognized Masters Program which offers two degrees. The Master of Science in Digital Media, (DM), established in 1993, is the oldest humanities-based academic graduate program in digital design, with more than 100 graduates working in digital design fields, from Atlanta to Bangkok. The closely related Master of Science in Human Computer Interaction, established in 1997, is a joint degree offered with the College of Computing and the School of Psychology that offers a more empirical approach to digital design.

The faculty in Digital Media within LCC are a unique group of technologically sophisticated practitioner theorists, rooted in the disciplines of the humanities, with decades of experience as innovators of advanced applications. The program is strengthened by its concentration within a single academic unit, and its active participation in Georgia Tech’s interdisciplinary GVU Center, which provides a framework for close research relationships with computer scientists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, architects, and system engineers. Because of the strength and range of faculty research in digital media, graduate students are currently involved in advanced projects in such areas as information visualization, educational computing, digital video and animation, ubiquitous computing, augmented reality, virtual reality, game design, interactive television, responsive spaces, and digital art installations.

The Ph.D. program in Digital Media will lead nationally and internationally in defining the curriculum for advanced study in digital media and will contribute significantly to the understanding and practice of the design of digital artifacts. Graduates of the program will become leaders in the creation and analysis of new media, occupying positions as teachers and researchers in universities and as researcher/designers in the computing and entertainment industries.