Exploring the impact of AI on research practices: a postdigital ethnographic study of doctoral students’ engagement with ChatGPT

In the evolving landscape of doctoral education, integrating artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has introduced significant shifts, reshaping traditional scholarly practices and knowledge production. Drawing on postdigital theoretical frameworks, this study explores the impact of ChatGPT on the material and relational dimensions of doctoral students’ identity trajectories. By employing research diaries from an ethnographic perspective, the research has brought to the fore the nature of doctoral engagement with ChatGPT. It reveals how AI tools reshape the individual practices of researchers and broader disciplinary and institutional structures that define academic knowledge production. Central to this investigation are the notions of reconfiguration and deterritorialization, which provide a conceptual lens for understanding the evolving nature of academic work in response to AI technologies. Findings reveal that while ChatGPT facilitates greater accessibility, interdisciplinary engagement, and cognitive offloading, it also raises concerns about epistemic dependency, algorithmic opacity, and the shifting role of human expertise. This provides an original perspective and empirical evidence on the role of AI in doctoral education.