Michael Lukaszuk is a PhD candidate in the Department of Cultural Studies. Since 2019, Queen’s University was an ideal choice for him because of the outstanding faculty here, whom he’s maintained relationships with since growing up in Kingston. When he became a new father, Queen’s University and the Kingston community offered his family the ideal support it needed, as well as a home environment close to his own family roots.
Michael developed a passion to look at music from a new point of view. He turned to another field to expand the scope of his education in Music and his passion for creative applications of coding. Queen’s University offered the foundation to allow his doctoral research to focus on the intersections of culture and software - he studies non-commercial discursive approaches to using and making software for artistic creation. It incorporates digital cultural studies fused with media studies to critically observe sound-artist musicians and code-based artists. Michael believes that “being a coder isn’t just about technology and engineering, but it also involves cultural influence.”
While performing his graduate work, Michael is an active and devoted father of two boys. He is dutiful and diligent in his role as a father and this extends to his approach to his graduate work, providing him with a motivational force to succeed. Michael explains how being a parent has made him much more aware of his time investment as a student, offering him efficiency and time management skills that are key to his flexibility in getting his work done when his children are occupied or sleeping. He explains, “You have to be careful with your decisions when you're a father." He takes a focused approach to graduate work to get the most out of the research process and to produce efficient and quality output. Fatherhood has made him more aware of the viability of his research and its future outcomes beyond the scope of the degree through his forward-thinking. Ultimately, he states that the fulfillment that fatherhood and his graduate work have brought him highlights the importance for all students to choose graduate research that will bring them fulfillment in the end too.
For more details on the PhD program in Cultural Studies, check out the Cultural Studies website.