Janneke Adema

Janneke Adema (she/her) is a cultural and media theorist working in the fields of (book) publishing and digital culture. She is an Associate Professor in Digital Media at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures (Coventry University) where she convenes the Post-Publishing research strand. In her research she explores the future of scholarly communications and experimental forms of knowledge production, where her work incorporates processual and performative publishing, radical open access, post-publishing, scholarly poethics, media studies, book history, cultural studies, and critical theory. She explore these issues in depth in her various publications, but also by supporting a variety of scholar-led, not-for-profit publishing projects, including the Radical Open Access Collective, Open Humanities Press, ScholarLed, Post Office Press (POP) and Copim. She is a Co-Investigator on the Research England and Arcadia funded Open Book Futures project.

The Post-Publishing research strand, which gathers together researchers and practitioners who, both collaboratively and individually, explore alternative pasts, presents, and futures for publishing. From 2019 to 2022, the strand hosted a series of symposia exploring contemporary approaches to experimental publishing.

Her background is in Media Studies (PhD, Coventry University), History (MA), Philosophy (MA) (both University of Groningen), and Book and Digital Media Studies (MA, Leiden University). She has previously conducted research for Jisc, The Knowledge Exchange, and DOAB, and has worked on the OAPEN project, subsequently the OAPEN foundation, from 2008 until 2013 (including research for OAPEN-NL). Her research for OAPEN focused on user needs and publishing models concerning Open Access books in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

She co-authored Públicos Fantasma – La Naturaleza Política Del Libro – La Red (Mexico: Taller de Ediciones Económicas, 2016) together with Andrew Murphie, Gary Hall, and Alessandro Ludovico and has co-edited a living book on Symbiosis together with Pete Woodbridge (Open Humanities Press, 2011) and a liquid book together with Gary Hall on the data-driven world of social networking: Really, We’re Helping To Build This ... Business: The Academia.edu Files (London: Open Humanities Press, 2016). Her monograph Living Books, Experiments in the Posthumanities (MIT Press, 2021), critically explores: how knowledge is created (produced, distributed, and consumed); how we as scholars are involved in knowledge creation; and how we can create alternatives to the present system. She has published in among others Culture Unbound; New Formations; Convolution; The International Journal of Cultural Studies; New Media & Society; New Review of Academic Librarianship; Krisis. Journal for Contemporary Philosophy; The Journal of Media Practice; Insights; Liber Quarterly; LOGOS. The Journal of the World Book Community; and Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture. (2024)

Publications

Books, reports, journal issues

• editor, with Pete Woodbridge, Symbiosis, Open Humanities Press, 2011.

• with Eelco Ferwerda and Ronald Snijder, OAPEN‐NL: A Project Exploring Open Access Monograph Publishing in the Netherlands – Final Report (OAPEN Project Report), The Hague, 2013.

• Knowledge Production Beyond The Book? Performing the Scholarly Monograph in Contemporary Digital Culture, Coventry: Coventry University, Jun 2015, x+248 pp, PDF, Wiki. PhD dissertation. [1]

• editor, with Gary Hall, Really, We're Helping to Build This ... Business: The Academia.edu Files, London: Open Humanities Press, Apr 2016.

• editor, with Gary Hall, Journal of Electronic Publishing 19(2): "Disrupting the Humanities: Towards Posthumanities", Winter 2016.

• with Andrew Murphie, Gary Hall, and Alessandro Ludovico, Públicos Fantasma – La Naturaleza Política Del Libro – La Red, Mexico: Taller de Ediciones Económicas, 2016. (Spanish)

• with Graham Stone, Changing Publishing Ecologies: A Landscape Study of New University Presses and Academic-Led Publishing, intro. Chris Keene, London: Jisc, 2017, 102 pp. Interview transcripts.

• with Marcell Mars and Tobias Steiner, Books Contain Multitudes: Exploring Experimental Publishing, COPIM, Jan 2021, PDF. Report.

• Living Books: Experiments in the Posthumanities, MIT Press, 2021, xiii+335 pp.

Articles

• with Gary Hall, "The Political Nature of the Book: On Artists' Books and Radical Open Access", New Formations 78, Summer 2013, pp 138-156. Preprint. [2].
  • "La naturaleza política del libro: sobre libros de artista y acceso abierto radical", trans. Sol Aréchiga Mantilla, in Circulación y resonancia I, ed. Nicolás Pradilla, Guadalajara, MX: Taller de Ediciones Económicas, 2016, pp 35-96. [3] (Spanish)
• "Practice What You Preach: Engaging in Humanities Research Through Critical Praxis", International Journal of Cultural Studies 16:5, Sep 2013, pp 491-505. Preprint.
• "Reviving the undead book: review of Planned Obsolescence. Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, Kathleen Fitzpatrick", Cultural Studies, 2013, PDF.
• with Eelco Ferwerda, "Publication Practices in Motion: The Benefits of Open Access Publishing for the Humanities", in New Publication Cultures in the Humanities: Exploring the Paradigm Shift, ed. Péter Dávidházi, Amsterdam University Press, 2014, pp 131-146.
• "Open Access", in Critical Keywords for the Digital Humanities, Lueneburg: Meson Press, 2014.
• "Cutting Scholarship Together/Apart: Rethinking the Political-Economy of Scholarly Book Publishing", in The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies, eds. xtine Burrough, Eduardo Navas and Owen Gallagher, London and New York: Routledge, 2014, pp 258-269, DOC.
• "Embracing Messiness: Open Access Offers the Chance to Creatively Experiment with Scholarly Publishing", LSE Impact Blog, 18 Nov 2014.
• "Don't Give Your Labour to Academia.edu. Use It to Strengthen the Academic Commons", Open Reflections, 7 Apr 2016; repr. in Really, We're Helping to Build This ... Business: The Academia.edu Files, eds. Janneke Adema and Gary Hall, London: Open Humanities Press, 2016.
• with Gary Hall, "Posthumanities: The Dark Side of “The Dark Side of the Digital”", Journal of Electronic Publishing 9(2): "Disrupting the Humanities: Towards Posthumanities", eds. Janneke Adema and Gary Hall, Winter 2016.
• "Lectura posthumana", La Maleta de Portbou 22: "Leer en la era digital", Mar/Apr 2017. [4] (Spanish)
  • "Posthuman Reading", Open Reflections, 2 Mar 2017.
• with Graham Stone, "The Surge in New University Presses and Academic-Led Publishing: An Overview of a Changing Publishing Ecology in the UK", LIBER Quarterly 27:1, 2017, pp 97-126, PDF.
• with Graham Stone, "Taking Back Control: The New University and Academic Presses That Are Re-Envisioning Scholarly Publishing", LSE Impact Blog, 20 Sep 2017.
• with Samuel Moore, "The Radical Open Access Collective: Building Alliances for a Progressive, Scholar-Led Commons", LSE Impact Blog, 27 Oct 2017.
• "Cut-up", in Keywords in Remix Studies, eds. Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher, and xtine burrough, London and New York: Routledge, 2017, pp 104-114. Postprint.
• with Samuel Moore, "Collectivity and Collaboration: Imagining New Forms of Communality to Create Resilience in Scholar-led Publishing", Insights 31:3, Mar 2018, PDF.
• editor, with Jonathan Shaw and Luca Morini, Media Practice and Education 19(1): "Disrupted Journal of Media Practice", May 2018, 115 pp.
• "Performative Publications", Media Practice and Education 19(1): "Disrupted Journal of Media Practice", eds. Jonathan Shaw, Luca Morini, and Janneke Adema, May 2018, pp 68-81, PDF.
• "The Poethics of Openness", in The Poethics of Scholarship, ed. Post Office Press, Coventry: Post Office Press/Rope Press, 2018, pp 16-26, Log.
• "The Ethics Of Emergent Creativity: Can We Move Beyond Writing As Human Enterprise, Commodity And Innovation?", in Whose Book is it Anyway? A View From Elsewhere on Publishing, Copyright and Creativity, eds. Janis Jefferies and Sarah Kember, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2019, pp 65-90, Reader, PDF, Log.
• with Kamila Kuc, "Unruly Gestures: Seven Cine-Paragraphs on Reading/Writing Practices in our Post-Digital Condition", Culture Unbound 11:1, Linköping: LiU E-Press, 2019, pp 190-208, PDF, Video.
• with Kaja Marczewska, "Post It", Convolution 5-6, Sep 2019. [5] [6]
• more

Interviews

• Julia Rehfeldt, "Janneke Adema on “The Mess that Open Access has become”", Hybrid Publishing Lab, 22 Sep 2014.

• Davide Giorgetta, Valerio Nicoletti, "A Conversation on Digital Archiving Practices with Janneke Adema", Post-Digital Publishing Archive, 22 Jun 2015.

• "The Radical Open Access Collective: Community, Resilience, Collaboration: An Open Insights Interview with Janneke Adema and James Smith", Open Insights, 16 Apr 2018.

• Towards a Roadmap for Open Access Monographs: A Knowledge Exchange Report, Bristol: Knowledge Exchange/Jisc, May 2019; rev.v., Jun 2019, 38 pp, PDF. Publisher.

Links

• Blog
• Mastodon: https://hcommons.social/@openreflections
• Profile on U Coventry
• Twitter
• Academia.edu
• Blog on Centre for Distruptive Media, 2013-2016