is the dissertation of j. nyla ink mcneill, DIY PhD, a community-rooted zine maker, researcher, multidisciplinary artist, and interdisciplinary social sciences researcher by training.

Departing from forms and formats expected of them in their academic and scientific disciplines, the work traces their punk af journey from “publish or perish” to going rogue, and always leaning back into community, art, and self-determined study as a path toward becoming.

When the COVID-19 lockdowns began, j. nyla chose to stay home and attend to a DIY PhD through the School for the Ecocene instead of attending their “dream school” upon acceptance. What followed was a deeply personal and political process of gathering ten years’ worth of spoken word poetry and prose.

to requite and/or return offers not a single argument typical of a dissertation, but a constellation of invitations to feel, remember, and imagine otherwise. Its works span the various ways of being in relationship with: friends, frenemies, lovers, land, Spirit, lineage, illness, community, institutions, self.