Studentships
Studentships documents
Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD) is a leading centre for research and postgraduate research training in the creative arts, architecture and design.
We welcome applications for research degree study from well qualified candidates wishing to pursue projects which align with our areas of research strength in: Art History and Theory, Architecture, Design, Fine Art, Jewellery, Landscape Architecture, Photography and Visual Communication. We also support interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research and welcome proposals involving collaboration across our areas of research interest. Applications are assessed on intellectual merit and contribution to our strategic priorities, and in relation to supervisory capacity.
This page provides information on specific areas of research in which we wish to encourage applications for research degree study.
We have expertise ranging across the historical, theoretical, contextual and museological aspects of art, architecture, craft and design, covering periods from the middle ages to the twenty-first century. Our specialisms include issues of patronage, style and iconography in late-medieval and Renaissance Europe; north Italian drawing and sketchbooks; Roman, Florentine, Sienese, Paduan and Venetian humanism; art and church history; religious and civic ritual; landscape in art; British art, architecture, town planning and design from the eighteenth century to date; European and American modernism; art criticism; the history of art collecting in Europe and North America; public monuments and sculpture with special attention to the regional counties; Japanese domestic architecture from the Edo period to World War II; open air museums; modern design, design discourse and gender issues; contemporary international jewellery and fine metalwork. In addition we offer supervision of practice-based research degrees, for which the written component is proportionately less than a text-based doctorate.
Contact: Dr Susan May (susan.may@bcu.ac.uk)
The Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) aims to foster new perspectives and expertise in practical and theoretical studies on Chinese visual arts in an international context. We are interested in proposals in Chinese art and visual culture, both contemporary and traditional, relating to the subjects of fine art, curatorial practice, visual communication and art history. CCVA provides an academic network to encourage and develop interdisciplinary research projects. Based on our international partnerships, we may be able to offer joint supervision with China Academy of Art, Hangzhou and Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.
Contact: Dr Jiehong Jiang (joshua.jiang@bcu.ac.uk) (www.ccva.org.uk)
A new cross-faculty, international centre has been formulated to capture the considerable interest generated by a radical new pragmatic definition of perception, which is the outcome of a decade of research undertaken at BCU. This research has startling consequences for our conceptions of language, intelligence, meaning, the senses, emotions and subjectivity, setting a fresh agenda for research and practice. Currently set within landscape architecture/architecture, philosophical nature of this holistic approach towards consciousness and the design process is relevant to all arts and design disciplines, philosophy, aesthetics, cognition, epistemology and education more generally. Bound by a common interest in physical materiality, the critical, visual realm and the forward thinking, anticipatory and predictive nature of design practice, proposals are welcome from those who wish to extend the theoretical understanding of design, or design education within a pragmatic perspective - topics might include the nature of intelligence, language, observation, visual skill, drawing and approaches to learning, theory based on the interrelationship between form, technology and the expression of ideas - as well as those wishing to explore the consequences for design practice, particularly, though not exclusively, relating to the design of the landscape, the regeneration of urban environments and for connecting spatial strategies and policies to real places to achieve a transformation in the quality of life. Proposals are also welcomed from those interested in developing alternative philosophical models as the basis of critical art and design discourse, pedagogy and practice, moving debate away from the arcane and unknowable realm of metaphysics into the real world informed by knowledge and ideas. Contact:
Contact: Professor Kathryn Moore (kathryn.moore@bcu.ac.uk)
We are interested in research proposals in the following areas: (i) practice-based PhDs in fashion, textile and surface design, including high value-added fashion and textile product development; (ii) fashion and textile industries: business, promotion, media and advertising, including strategic policy and the fashion and textile industries and technology and innovation in fashion and textile design; (iii) fashion and textile theory: fashion culture and consumption; lifestyle, image, beauty and celebrity; (iv) fashion and ethnicity, including Asian fashion and textiles, the development of indigenous crafts through design innovation and development, and the role of indigenous crafts and costume in design and branding.
Contact: Professor Colin Gale (colin.gale@bcu.ac.uk)
Theoretical studies of fashion and fashion design, with particular emphasis on the psychology of fashion and clothing, including fashion's relation to self identity, self presentation and communication. Specific areas of expertise include fashion and the psychology of the body, body image, and embodiment. We are also interested in research involving visual analysis of fashion imagery, feminist approaches to fashion, and ethical issues in this area. Proposals involving qualitative research, particularly those involving a phenomenological approach, would be welcomed.
Contact Dr Anne Boultwood (anne.boultwood@bcu.ac.uk)
We are interested in a diversity of fine art practices, including: installation, photography, performance, filmmaking, object and image making. We are particularly interested in the legacy of the avant-garde and the expanded practices that evolved out of minimalism in European and North American art, including whether avant-garde practices can be utilised as methods and methodologies to research the relationship of aesthetics, politics and the sacred.
Theoretical areas of interest include: theories of the event (Deleuze and Guattari, Alain Badiou and Jean-Francois Lyotard); art and temporality; art and subjectivity; performance and performativity; and the potential of writing as a means of registering or making intelligible the signifying and asignifying aspects of art and art practice.
We are also interested in applications in the following areas: research engaged with art in the public sphere, addressing new approaches to curatorial practice or art in public spaces; art practices concerned with archival and historical research engaged with producing new interpretations and methodologies; performance art and performance and performativity studies addressing notions of the identity, sexuality and subjectivity and also notions of 'the event' and art.
Contact: Henry Rogers (henry.rogers@bcu.ac.uk)
Practice based research in the field of contemporary studio jewellery, metal crafts and related creative subjects, with a particular interest in hybrid practices that bridge design, crafts and fine art discourses. We have theoretical expertise in the application of continental hermeneutics, the writings of Paul Ricoeur, Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin, and the feminist writings of Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva to the practice of contemporary jewellery. We also have a particular interest in contemporary European narrative jewellery: the prevalent themes, paradigms and the cognitive interaction between maker, wearer and viewer observed through the process and production of narrative jewellery.
Contact: Professor Jivan Astfalck (jivan.astfalck@bcu.ac.uk)
Our research interests lie in the application of arts-based models of designing to the creation of digital interactive systems (both software and hardware), and the development of methods for the evaluation of the user interface and user experience provided by such systems.
Our work seeks to inform the user interface design process and the tools and techniques used by designers to elicit information about the user experience. This arts-based approach offers a new lens, focussing attention on design solutions that extend beyond traditional approaches based on functionality. Our goal is to establish design methodologies and models for the creation of systems that provide a 'joy in use' experience to the user.
With regard to software, we have specific interest in extending the designer's view beyond traditional engineering-based approaches to usability, by combining our arts-based philosophy psychological and HCI perspectives to address important yet underrepresented aspects of the user experience. We conduct studies that integrate real-world analogue experience, expertise and creativity with digital design technologies and learning systems. We investigate the role of emotion and motivation in users' response to software interfaces, and the influence on users' attitudes, expectations and future use of software.
With regard to hardware, this concerns studies of Multimodal Perception, especially the integration of haptic perception (touch, gesture) and its associated control feedback, with other senses such as sight and audition, in the context of skill development and tacit experience.
Contact: Dr Andrew Saxon (andy.saxon@bcu.ac.uk)
We are interesting in research proposals in the following three areas: (i) the philosophy, theory and practice of design, with particular interests in research that crosses the boundaries between philosophy, aesthetics and design/art theory; (ii) the new masterplanning, an area of research responding to the urgent need to develop new approaches to spatial planning, the renewal of transport systems and climate adaptation, connecting aesthetics, tectonics and culture to the social and physical context of our lives; (iii) the new sustainability, exploring the concept of sustainability in its broader cultural and social context, examining the interrelationships between concepts of well being, aesthetics and materiality of place.
Contact: Professor Kathryn Moore (kathryn.moore@bcu.ac.uk)
Perception of the landscape, in particular regarding the development and refinement of how individuals interact with the environment. Previous work has emphasised the importance of user based language in identifying the ways in which access to natural elements of the urban landscape contribute to overall individual well-being and how such access supports individual life styles. Key aspects include the mental restorative potential of such interaction, the factors that contribute to a positive association with the environment including access, positive and negative factors, landscape structure, the notion of a supportive environment as well as modelling the interface between access, quality of the environment and its ability to support individual personal social requirements.
Contact: Professor Richard Coles (richard.coles@bcu.ac.uk)
History and theory of photography, with a particular interest in documentary theory and practice. Particular areas of expertise include: British documentary and community photography, photography and education, photography, history and memory (e.g. the re-use of historic photographs in contemporary narrative museum displays), and South African photography. We are also interested in the interdisciplinary overlaps between photography and current research using visual and image-based approaches in anthropology and sociology, including research on ethical issues in visual research. Proposals involving elements of photographic practice are also welcome.
Contact: Professor Darren Newbury (darren.newbury@bcu.ac.uk)
The interpretation and mediation of engagement with the arts, including research and curatorial practice with galleries and museums. Critical studies of art in the public realm since the mid-twentieth century, including investigations of commissioning procedures, strategic frameworks and institutional motivations and how these converge or diverge from community participation and artistic intention.
The use of archives and documentation in process-based and socially engaged arts practice; creative practices of interpretation; the revitalisation of historic collections within contemporary art practice and art education.
Contact: Dr Sian Everitt (sian.everitt@bcu.ac.uk)
Sustainable Development is now an economic, ethical and environmental imperative that requires further research and the development of skills and expertise, particularly in relation to design. Design is central to delivering all aspects of sustainability, and we are particularly keen to explore research projects in embedding education for sustainable development in the curriculum, sustainable product/service design, the role of design in environmentally and socially conscious businesses, design for a transition society and design in the context of developing economies.
We have also established a Centre for Low Carbon Design. The centre combines three thematically linked approaches to design for sustainability, namely; Complexity Science, Low Carbon Retrofit and Creating Desire. We welcome proposals that fall within any of these areas. New research will establish new methods and processes to deliver low carbon design, re-design desire, and identify new business opportunities through an ambitious programme that addresses many aspects of decarbonising design. Increasingly stringent legislation (for example, carbon reduction commitments) is already driving technological innovation, but promoting attractive low-carbon lifestyles will also be critical to create sustainable futures. Better designed products will be needed that reduce carbon emissions and are sustainable in the long term. People need to be persuaded of the desirability of those designs, and thus enable us all to ‘live better and consume less’. Decarbonised design will have massive impacts for social aspirations and values and in the products and product-service systems (PSS) that will emerge.
Contact: Dr Mark Smith (mark.smith@bcu.ac.uk)
We have expertise in a range of visual communication specialisms. These include: drawing theory and practice; graphic arts and communication, including graphic novels; illustration; poster and book design; printmaking; and reportage arts. We have particular interests in narrative and sequential design, the art of story telling and communicating through images. We welcome proposals including both theoretical and practical dimensions.
Contact: Dr Andy Saxon (andy.saxon@bcu.ac.uk)
The Visualisation Research Unit (VRU) supports MPhil and PhD study in the application of digital technology in the Visual and Performing Arts. The VRU's research outputs are considerable and considered cutting edge in this emerging field, making critical contributions to the understanding of the opportunities and issues that confront artists in the world of digital technology. The VRU has excellent facilities for doing this, with a state of the art HD Video and sound studio located at the Eastside Projects space in Digbeth, encouraging artist/researchers to be working in an environment alongside artists and curators associated with the gallery. As well as this, our lab at Margaret Street is a place where the traditions of the Art School meet one of the most sophisticated technology set-ups in the UK designed for artists, with access to a vast range of technologies and technological approaches. The VRU specialises in network technologies and motion capture, having secured a patent in 2010 for a new mo-cap system, alongside Arts Council funded work to engage artists in the online space. Current PhD students are looking at areas like sound production, device development, practical interventions for movement and the potential for artists in virtual world environments.
Contact: Professor Gregory Sporton, (gregory.sporton@bcu.ac.uk)
Well-being is a multidimensional issue which concerns the ways that humans interact with the environment. It represents an area of high interest to a range of professions, organisations and user groups where a fuller understanding of the parameters and dimensions relating to well-being are an important goal of society, being a rich area for research. As part of its overall research profile BCU is interested in students from a range of disciplines who would wish to apply their disciplinary knowledge and expertise to the study of well-being particularly in relation to advancing our understanding of the notion of supportive environments and the development of well-being capital.
Contact: Professor RichardColes (richard.coles@bcu.ac.uk)
For further details of our current research potential applications are encouraged to look at web pages relating to Research Centres and Research Staff and Students.
Further information on research degree study and studentship opportunities can be found by following the links below:
Details of how to apply can be found here
Research: BIADResearch@bcu.ac.uk
BIAD, Birmingham City University, Gosta Green, Birmingham B4 7DX