Diamond's dissertation is one model. It will not be the last.
What would it look like to advise a podcast dissertation in a different discipline — nursing, education policy, organizational leadership? What if the participant community wasn't a focus group but an extended series of individual interviews? What if the podcast format wasn't a series of eight episodes but a single long-form documentary?
The framework is portable. The principles — center voices, sustain culture, make research accessible, hold rigor and creativity together — travel across contexts.
What institutions need to do: IRB processes need to be updated to account for public-facing research participants. Committee structures need to include or develop expertise in creative and multimodal research forms. Dissertation handbooks need language that doesn't inadvertently exclude innovative methodologies. Program directors need to be in conversation with each other about what they're seeing.
What this guide is trying to do: Make it easier to say yes. Give advisors the language, the frameworks, the concrete examples, and the practical tools to say: yes, I can advise this, and here is how.
Diamond's work is proof that it can be done with rigor, care, and joy. The question is how many more doors it opens.