We are a research team based at Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC. Our work examines public scholarship at the intersection of digital technologies and social media platforms, online scholarship, and equity and human rights issues. This research is funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant (430-2017-00104) to Veletsianos and Hodson.

Combining qualitative and quantitative methods with feminist analysis, our research aims to make sense of online abuse targeted towards academics, and to aid in policy and strategy development at varied levels, from the individual as both researcher and instructor, to the institutions, and to the platforms and the networks they afford, as well as governments.

The first stage of our project involved interviewing women scholars who self-identified as having experiences with online harassment as a result of their scholarly activities. Out of that data we have published two articles. In the second stage of our research, we have analyzed data collected from a survey of academics’ experiences with online harassment.

We have mobilized our research efforts and results in diverse and multimodal ways for academic and non-academic audiences, including through peer-reviewed publications, presentations, ops-eds, simulations, and research shorts.