Deena Abulfttough recently finished her PhD in sociology at McMaster University. She received the 2017 Outstanding Graduating Student Award from the Canadian Sociological Association and is a holder of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for her research on Twitter networks of the activists of the Egyptian revolution. Her research interests are in digital activism, computational sociology, social media analytics, social movements, and political sociology.  She specializes in social network analysis, especially online networks. See what she has to say about her time at McMaster:

During my time at McMaster, I have travelled many times to the United States to receive extensive training in methods of social network analysis and online data scraping. I have presented my work at many international conferences and have work published in renowned journals. My interest in digital activism has earned me a fellowship at the Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship at McMaster University.

The sociology department and the members of my dissertation committee supported me throughout my PhD years. Besides giving me excellent scholarly feedback, my supervisor, Dr. Tina Fetner, was very supportive and introduced me to many people who specialize in digital activism and digital data collection. She guided me to opportunities on courses that teach social network analysis and assisted me with the acquisition of historical Twitter data needed for my research. Also, when I needed help with collecting my Twitter data, the sociology department provided me with a space and equipment to accomplish that. The department supported me with a travel grant, which helped towards covering the costs of the many travels I had to do for my research. When the time came for my job talk practice, I found the hall full with most of the professors and my colleagues at the sociology department to support me and give feedback on the talk before I went to my first campus visit. I also benefited from many of the renowned scholars who were invited to the public lectures that the sociology department organized.