Who we are

I am currently interested in exploring people's embodied and emotional relationships with digital data, devices and platforms in everyday places (e.g. home, work, transport and public spaces). I am focusing on the ways different people have different relationships ‘the digital’, highlighting how power continually manifests in and through digital technologies. I use feminist and queer methodological tools that enable an exploration of these issues.

I am also interested in the relationships between violence, vulnerability and embodiment. I am working on a colaborative project with Man Kind UK about men's unwanted sexual experiences (MUSE), exploring the barriers men face when trying to access formal support. 

My research experience is tied together through geographies of gender, sexuality and the body. At Oxford, I conducted research on the precarious lives of young working-class men, exploring the emotional and embodied experience of austerity. My PhD focused on men who use Grindr. I was interested in the ways masculinity, sexuality and desire emerge as queer men learned to use digital technologies for sex, dates and intimacy. As a research assistant at Newcastle University, I worked with LGBTQ+ people at a higher education institute to examine experiences of diversity and inclusion. In collaboration with Barnardo’s, I also worked with year 5 school children in North East England to explore – and challenge – their understandings of masculinity and what it means to be a man.

My research draws on media studies, critical theory, cultural studies, and science and technology studies.  I have conducted ethnographic research into the use of new media technologies such as iPads and other tablet computers, by scientists working in fields such as chemistry, genetics, neuroscience and biology. My research focuses on everyday practices related to digital media, and seeks to critique ways in which media technologies are involved in the production and maintenance of identities. I also examine ways in which new media technologies such as Virtual Reality, Immersive Tech and 5G come to be defined in certain ways - as good, bad, exciting, dangerous or perhaps all of these things at once. 

My practice led research is in human centred design for complex technical transformations at scale in VUCA scenarios. this involves underatsning how to leverage human agency via cognitive and behavioural affordances.  My work investigates specifically how machine learning models might close the semantic gap in diverse forms of sentiment analysis for complex human/machine convergence.

This has involved a long term investigation into the social semiotics of the constructed image, advertisig and brand in an algorithmic and networked context, informing novel methods in design for complexity, human factors and Artificial Intelligence.

These methods have thus far helped define workable human centred morphologies of, and topographies for, User Experience Design (UXD) vectors, grammars and architectures of digital artefacts, products and services by means of natural language analogies for corpus and systematic algorithmic formalisms.

Contributing to research in human factors across :

• behavioural analytics
• attribution metrics
• cognitive modelling
• hybrid AI
• neural networks
• emotional computing

My work is applied in transformational, parametric and/or generative systems in

• eCommerce
• computer games
• digital health
• psychometrics
• neuro-marketing
• cognitive, emotional, social and cultural computing
• next generation wearables such as Brain Computer Interfaces
• innovation eco-syetems
• organisational agility

I have always been interested in the technicities of material culture : 

• how visual meaning, values and affordances are designed, transacted and maintained through media technologies
• how iconography, belief, ideology, narrative and mythology are designed, commodified and transacted in representational systems
• the technical performativity of cultural capital
• the relationship between asset, affordance, agency, end user engagement, behaviour and social impact

Specifically over the last 25 years, this has been in relation to digital transformation of values and complex human factors engineering. 

My first neuro-game & dementia tech in 2009 led to breakthrough cognitive UX design patterns. From that work, I developed “RhizoMetrics” TM (2014), a parametric design method that supports the development, monitoring and recalibration of behavioural affordances in any computational context.

 Using RhizoMetrics, I am developing cognitive UXD paradigms for

• ‘nudge mechanics'
• 'neuro-navigation'
• 'neuro-transformation'

to guide valuable and ethical singularities in IoT, robotics & immersive environments for Industry4.0 and beyond, as core to a fundamental Human / Machine Operating System - HM/OSS www.rhizometricdesign.com

My work has always generated personal, behavioural and socio-cultural data and insights, putting me at the fore of ethical debates over many years, and defining ethical parameters for designed User Experiences is a primary objective of my research. 

My current research is in the area of machine learning, including both mathematical foundations and applications. Prediction with expert advice and topological data analysis are my main topics of interest. 

Prediction with expert advice is a paradigm for sequential forecasting that studies how one can merge predictions from different sources when reliability of these sources needs to be inferred from the predictions themselves. This paradigm is close to online bandits and related to many other machine learning techniques, from ridge regression to boosting. I am particularly interested in direct applications for prediction with expert advice algorithms.

Topological data analysis is a relatively recent but already mature area of machine learning that tries to apply notions from topology, a highly abstract branch of pure mathematics, to finding patterns in point clouds. Currently, I am working mostly on expressing topological data analysis ideas in the form of kernels inducing a reproducing kernel Hilbert space structure on data.

I am also remaining interested in the developments in both of my original research areas: algorithmic information theory / Kolmogorov complexity and constructive logical semantics.

Dr Lance Dann is a Senior Lecturer in Audio and Digital Media, and is a multi-awarding winning producer of radio programs and podcasts. His works has included writing radio dramas and producing and presenting documentaries for the BBC, designing theatrical sound at The Wooser Group, and in 2017 creating the critically acclaimed audio thriller series Blood Culture

In my current research, I contribute to academic and public understanding of how technology, data and information can be used in organisational and policy contexts to support the interests of citizens, communities, public service professionals and governments. I have studied and evaluated a range of digital health services and technologies including electronic patient records, data dashboards, visualisation tools and mobile phone technologies in a range of different health settings.  I also have research interests in fuel poverty and community innovation in the field of energy justice.

I am co-investigator on the Horizon 2020 project EmERGE (€5.5 million) in which partners from five EU countries have developed a mHealth platform, which includes a smartphone application, to support people living with HIV. In that project I contribute to a Workpackage on ‘Sociotechnical Evaluation and Codesign’ in which we have introduced a process to facilitate the coproduction of the platform with clinicians and people living with HIV.  Our approach was selected as an exemplar of HIV-related, social science research at the World AIDS conference 2018.  I also lead a Workpackage on ‘Innovation and Commercialisation’ in which I am responsible for ensuring the sustainability of the EmERGE technology after the end of the project through the creation of a digital health Community Interest Company. 

In addition, I carry out research with Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations, policymakers, commissioners and infrastructure organisations who take action and provide services for people in need of support. I founded the Monitoring, Evaluation and Impact Partnership which provides training and support to VCS organisations through our partner Community Works. Findings from this partnership work have been included in Brighton and Hove’s Social Value Framework and Guide and in the City’s Fairness Commission Report. They have also informed the Communities and Third Sector Commission (£2.2 million) evaluation and the 5-yearly social and economic audit of the third sector in Brighton and Hove ‘Taking Account 4’.

My specialism is in qualitative research methods and my theoretical interests are in Science and Technology Studies in particular Actor-Network Theory and related 'practice-based' approaches, and complexity theory. I was co-investigator on an ESRC seminar series entitled New Practices for New Publics in which I facilitated civil society and academic partners to pursue theoretical interests in ‘practice’.

My research interests have a business and technology focus with a core theme being the impact of new technologies on business models as well as the broader socio-economic environment.

I am particularly interested in the ways that information is used by organisations as a source of competitive advantage and innovation. Over the last decade I have been on the organising committee of the European Conference Series on eGovernment (ECEG) and presented and reviewed papers as well as chaired sessions at these events. More recently I joined the organising committee of the European Conference Series on Social Media (ECSM). Being involved with these events has brought me into contact with many academics from around the world and led to my current interest in the Internet of Things (IoT) and business model innovation.

I am currently working on a research project to better understand the business models being developed and deployed by data-driven enterprises across a range of sectors.

Current research projects:

• The information business;
• Data-driven business models.

Previous research projects:

• Information literacy;
• Public sector data exploitation.

Sanaz's research interests include human-centred development of new technologies that incorporate studies of user's experiences, cognition and collaboration in designing a novel intelligent systems delivered via multiple platforms: mobile devices, interactive television, tag-based technologies, wearable technologies, and robotic interactions. Some related themes of her research include Human Computer Interaction, Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), User’s Modelling and Adaptation, Human Robotic Interactions, Intelligent Interaction Modelling, Data Analytic and Sentiment Analysis, Artificial Intelligence Ethics for Development of Human Centred AI-based Systems.

Key Research Themes:

• Human Computer Interaction (HCI),
• Artificial Intelligence (AI),
• User Experience (UX),
• Machine Learning (ML)

Current Research & Development Projects:

•  Artificial Intelligence Ethics:  Development of Evidence-based, Empirical-based Ethical Guidelines for Design and Development of AI-based Systems.

• Evaluation and testing of Sport Technologies, factor including usability and beyond usability, including brain/cognitive performance using EEG devices. The project aims to develop a set of guidelines for sport tech industry to incorporate in design of human centred technologies, to maximise usability, and beyond usability, i.e. efficiency, effectiveness, user satisfaction, and cognitive performance. 

• Research project with University of São Paulo, Universito of Chile, Es el Senor Vagner de Sousa Beserra. Colaboración Internacional para el desarrollo de la Televisión Digital Terrestre Educativa en Chile - to develop an International consortium to explore a potential of educational application for digital television (DTV).

• Sentiment Analysis and Data Mining of Educational Application from Twitter, University of Portsmouth, and Edge Hill University.

• Empirical study to investigate and evaluate Human Robotic Interaction, mainly aspects of usability in terms of, technology acceptances, efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction.

• User-centred development of Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT), in collaboration of Brighton and Sussex Medical School.

• Smart ambient – development of location based informal learning through mobile and ubiquitous technologies in collaboration of University of Portsmouth and University of Al-Mustansiriyah.

• Brain Computer Interface (BCI): Experimental study to evaluate cognitive loads and performances of users using technologies in edutainment and digital well-being (in particular, mobile apps and wearable technologies)

Zoe is a Developmental Psychologist interested in language learning and literacy, across a range of ages, and in a variety of contexts.

Research includes investigations into early language acquisition such as how children learn words from shared reading interactions. This has included looking at the effects of different book formats, illustrations and reading styles on language and literacy acquisition using a variety of experimental methods. Other research has investigated parent-child shared reading interactions with different book formats, and home learning for children across a range of ages. Current projects investigate the effects of different media types on emergent literacy skills using eye tracking technology.

Zoe's research includes community projects with home educating families in the South of England, and investigations into how learning environments (including online learning) support the timely acquisition of literacy skills, broader "life skills" and wellbeing.

Zoe is a keen advocate of Open Scholarship (Open Science), and shares resources, code and analyses on the Open Science Framework.  Zoe leads Brighton's ReproducibiliTea journal club for Open Science Advocates and is local network lead for the UK Reproducibility Network.

Dr Fotaris's research interests focus on the integration of technology in teaching and learning, particularly in the use and pedagogic potential of games, escape rooms, and virtual/augmented environments in educational settings. A representative list of research interests is the following:

• Educational Escape Rooms
• Game-Based Learning / Gamification / Location-based Games / Alternate Reality Games
• Augmented / Virtual Reality
• User Experience (UX)
• Design Thinking
• Cybersecurity

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou is international consultant to the 3-years research project “MyGender: Mediated young adults’ practices: advancing gender justice in and across mobile apps” (funded by FCT Portuguese public agency for science, technology, and innovation). Aristea has recently completed the UKRI Innovation Fellowship/AHRC Leadership Fellowship funded research project ART/ DATA/ HEALTH: Data as creative material for health and wellbeing. The project created an innovative and interdisciplinary process that offered new tools, at the intersections of data science with art practice, to approach two key issues in healthy aging and prevention: digital skills and health literacy. In 2021 she also led the project 'Impact of COVID-19 on Arts and Health charities' (funded by UKRI Research England’s Quality-related Research Strategic Priorities Funding (QR SPF) 2020-21). 

ART/DATA/HEALTH followed on from Aristea's research "Critical data literacy, Creative media and Social equality" (funded by Rising Stars, University of Brighton 2017), which focused on big data and citizen engagement. The project run training workshops with community and civil society organisations to advance their digital and data analytics skills. 

In November 2020, Aristea edited the Special Issue Digital Culture meets Data: Critical perspectives, in the academic journal Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, with Dr Helen Thornham. The special issue follows on from the  conference Digital Culture Meets Data: Critical Perspectives (November 2017, University of Brighton) organised by the Digital Culture & Communication Section of ECREA. 

Aristea's research about wearable sensors and about the Quantified Self in San Francisco was published in the online platform Open Democracy and in Health Sociology Review. She edited a special issue in digital media praxis for Ada: Journal of Gender, Technology and New Media, (Issue 5, June 2014, with Alex Juhasz & Kate O'Riordan). She served as Chair of the Digital Culture and Communication Section of European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) (2016-18), as Vice Chair (2014-2016) and as Early-career scholar representative (YECREA) of the section between 2012-2014. 

Her first book Feminist Activism and Digital Networks was endorsed by high profile academics in her field Prof Nick Couldry(London School of Economics and Political Science, UK), Prof Rosalind Gill (City, University of London, UK) and Prof Carol Stabile (University of Oregon, USA). The book was been described as: 

“highly recommended”, “an urgently needed antidote to […] the invisibility of gender and sexuality as embodied practices in communication studies and social movement studies alike”; and deemed as “required reading for social justice classrooms.”  

Engaging Design and Making Research:

Designed products, spaces, services and systems pervade every part of our lives. The world is awash with ‘stuff’  - Design has ‘made it’. However in times of ecological crisis, environmental pollution, social and political uncertainty and economic disparity design stands simultaneously as both disease and cure. 

I am interested in how designing and making contributes to positive, public persuasion, sustainable storytelling, community engagement, culture shift and behaviour change beyond delivering the next iteration of homogenous mobile phone. Design has agency and is being engaged as a tool and means to address issues of our time. Moreover design is about engagement – through potent, product propaganda, meaningful, material messaging and critical, craft campaigns, designers and makers are utilising the powerful language of materials, objects and products and the ubiquity of services and systems to change behaviour, provoke protest and empower people.

Designers and makers of diverse types are dispensing with disciplinary traditions and forming new alliances, promoting civic engagement, mass participation and clean growth, creating tools for accessible exploitation, community activism and more virtuous circular economies. Post disciplinary methods see the rethinking of material manipulation, techno-crafting, distributed manufacturing and open-sourcing. Some of our most pressing issues have re-awakened design with the critical concern and purpose that once defined it and artists, designers and makers can turn these issues into opportunities for positive intervention and  ethical economic development that integrates more symbiotically with our eco-system.

Through her practice Charlotte Gould explores the potential for open interactive installations in digitally mediated public spaces and she has developed a number of artworks using urban screens. She is a visual communicator working with digital and tangible media, exploring audience participation, open interactivity, immersion, augmented reality and 360°environments. She has developed a number of mixed reality systems to prompt play and interaction across social and cultural boundaries. She examines audience agency, testing the boundaries of open interactive systems, to offer opportunity for diverse audiences to co-create artworks through the development of unique narratives. Through her research Charlotte tests the potential for mixed reality environments to promote public engagement, looking at how this can impact on culture, changing the way we engage in the urban environment and contribute to a collective memory and sense of place. She has developed 360° mixed reality video installations which engage participants through non-linear narrative with issues such as sustainabilty and health and well being. Charlotte has exhibited her work internationally including in China, Australia with Urban Picnic and Peoples Screen and in Europe at MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona) where she had a three-month residency and exhibition (2011). She has delivered papers for international conferences with peer reviewed proceedings, journals and book chapters. 

My research investigates how people attend to CCTV footage, particularly when instructed to focus on specific features in the footage and witnessing different severity of crimes. This research is important as CCTV footage is used as evidence in court, however, very little is known about the behavioural characteristics of the CCTV observer, and the strategies applied by observers when visually attending to CCTV footage.

I am trained in using a range of eye trackers and have integrated eye tracking technology into many research projects, including tracking people’s eyes as they observe CCTV footage. Eye-tracking technology is a growing field used to detect eye movements and analyse human processing of visual information in both the lab and in natural environments. The data is innovative and informative, allowing researchers a unique insight into how we attend to and understand the world around us.

My other research interests include:

• Online deviance and cybercrime
• Forensic risk assessments
• Psychological impact of crime
• Change blindness

I have research interests in a number of areas, but I am particularly interested in the application of technology to support people who experience mental health problems. I also have a significant interest in investigating mental health interventions and exploring the experiences of people using mental health services.

Previous research projects:

• BlueIce: Smartphone app for young people who self-harm and attend Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. https://www.oxfordhealth.nhs.uk/blueice/
• Lifeguide: Software platform for internet interventions  https://www.lifeguideonline.org/

My research and consultancy have centred around a practice based, design thinking approach, applied to real world contexts, alongside developing new methods for co-designing with others.

I emerged from a background in 3D disciplines, studying physics and product design, later becoming involved in digital and interaction design for websites and Apps. I am therefore interested in designing experiences across different dimensions and disciplines, particularly where they are applied to social innovation. My approach has evolved over time, from a human centred (UX) perspective which emphasises the individual and their immediate networks, towards a wider, systemic viewpoint that also considers the impact of solutions on supply chains, society, and the natural world.

My work has had a specific focus (location-based games) but I also have wider interests based on the methodologies I have adopted.

Specific Themes:

I have been investigating educational location-based games and their motivational properties to encourage outdoor play for young people. I am interested in how they can support conditions that lead to an ‘ideal experience’ using flow theory, originally proposed by Czikszentmihalyi and I have created my own model of flow for this genre.  Projects include:

• Outdoor trail with Develop Outdoors, a local CIC who work with vulnerable teenagers on outdoor play for wellbeing.
• Games in woodlands for Forestry England to encourage a connection with natural environments and science for school curriculum.
• Co-designing games with local schools, Sussex Wildlife Trust and University of Sussex

Wider Interests:

I am interested in applying design thinking, including co-design methods and circular economy approaches to innovation. I also follow a methodology that ensures design research is rigorous, based on a model adapted from Elizabeth Sanders work, that ensures stakeholders’ requirements are considered from a range of perspectives, including their emotional and latent needs. Typical projects included:

• As an associate researcher with Always Possible, a local business innovation company who work with charities and SME’s I helped to create new directions for their clients, using co-design and evidence-based approaches.
• Lead academic for a KTP with PDD Ltd., a leading design consultancy working on a research model for understanding user and contextual requirements. Experience mapping techniques and other techniques I introduced supported rigour for client investigations.
• New methods developed for working with young people applied to global design projects, for example, working with Gambian Projects Overseas and Gambian Medical Services on innovations for primary schools. We were considering circular economy approaches to building and food services.
• Supporting a Nominet sponsored project to engage young people with town planning and community engagement, applying methods of working with young people I developed. This was a project initiated by Nick Gant as part of the Community 21 programme at the University.

I am particularly interested in issues to do with digital capabilities and curriculum design, especially the interface between pedagogy, quality assurance, governance and technological issues. At the moment I’m undertaking research into student technology ambassadors, virtual reality, and the use of technology in learning and teaching practices. I continue to research and publish in my subject area of heritage and archaeology.

My early research was in the area of Human Computer Interaction and explored older people's appropriation of digital technologies, considering issues of accessibility in relation to the ageing process. This continues to be an area of interest for me with my research focusing on different technologies (from online communities, social media, mobile phones and video games) as well as looking at the different motivations that underpin this technological involvement (e.g. intergenerational connections, sense of community, adaptations to ageing, etc.). My current research in this area is looking at older's people's susceptibility to online scams. More recently I have been developing research in the area of Cyberpsychology which focuses on the human relationship with digital technology at a psychological (rather than design) level. Here I am interested in the way that everyday digital interactions come to shape our experience of the world, ourselves and other people. My current research in this area focuses on smartphone dependency as an existential concern and the notion of 'digital mindfulness'. My approach to research is informed by my background in HCI and user experience and as such emphasises understandings of technology use that are grounded in an appreciation of subjectivity and social context.  

My work takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on sociology, social psychology, gender studies, education, and cultural studies. I use feminist and creative methodologies and discourse analysis to explore power and inequality in everyday life. My research explores sexualities, gender, youth cultures, media representation and consumption, social media and popular culture.

Previous work has included working as a researcher on an NSPCC-funded project on youth sexting, an ESRC-funded project on youth aspiration and celebrity culture and an ESRC-funded project on long-term couple relationships. I have co-authored two academic books – one on celebrity and youth aspiration (with Heather Mendick, Kim Allen and Aisha Ahmad) and one on sex advice in media culture (with Meg-John Barker and Rosalind Gill).

I have a graphic book with Sarah Leaney and Danny Noble coming out in 2022 - Class: A Graphic Guide.

My current research includes work on sex advice in zines, research with Olu Jenzen, Carl Bonner-Thompson and Jane Melvin on LGBTQ digital youth work, and a project on LGBTQI+ people's experiences in immigration detention.

Olu Jenzen is Reader in Media Studies and the Director of the Research Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender. Her research ranges over different themes in Digital Media and Cultural Studies and Critical Theory with a particular interest in the aesthetics of protest, social media and LGBTQ activism and popular culture. She has published in journals such as Convergence; Gender, Place and Culture and Social Movement Studies and is the co-editor of The Aesthetics of Protest: Global Visual Culture and Communication, Amsterdam UP, 2020. 

I am interested in critical noise theory and novel approaches to analysing the political agency of contemporary art practices. My research methods are interdisciplinary, spanning critical theory, philosophy, and a range of art practices—including performance, installation, and film. I am currently completing an arts practice-based PhD at The University of Brighton.

My Ed D research focused on digital technologies as mediators of youth work practice, and I am still really interested in how digital tools and remote learning possibilities can be used within informal education contexts. Of particular interest is the development of digital hybrid pedagogies for educators, and how the digital world impacts on young people, youth culture and identity formation.

I am also very interested in work-based learning and its enabling properties for part-time, mature learners whether in HE, or other learning contexts.

My main area of research is the sociology of death and dying - my current research projects are exploring  the experiences of those returning to work after a bereavement and examining differences in end of life rituals due to the Covid 19 pandemic. 

Latest article: Teaching Death to Undergraduates: Exploring the Student Experience of Discussing Emotive Topics in the University Classroom' in Educational Review:

My research interests are focused on XR, screen-based or mobile, storytelling designed to tell stories about the imagined, forgotten, or unremembered others.  The focus of this work is centred on the spatial memory of the city’s built environment as an intersectional backdrop to examine its contemporary and/or archival data.  

I have a transdisciplinary practice which investigates and combines areas of British colonial history, archival data, computer science, digital geographies, and digital humanities as it related to the spatial memory of the built environment.

Methodologies I use in my practice intersect across practical and theoretical frames such as computer vision, human to computer interaction, human to human looking and by extension machines that see.

My practices uses highly experimental media which consisting of the following combinations;

• Photography

• Moving Image

• Creative coding

• Augmented reality

• Virtual reality 

• Data

• Conversational chatbots

Through either screen-based, mobile or physical computing.

My research interests span the multidisciplinary field of cultural informatics/digital humanities with a particular interest on the deployment of advanced digital methods to support various cultural heritage management processes (study, research, preservation, communication, education and enjoyment of heritage assets). My research includes working on digital documentation of tangible heritage collections and intangible material knowledge; virtual representations to contextualise museum artefacts; interactive 3D games to engage online heritage audiences; digital fabrication (3D printing) to enhance the interpretation of heritage collections; use of advanced digital technologies in conjunction with creative methods; UX and evaluation of digital applications supporting heritage research and GLAM audience engagement.

Since the early nineteen-nineties my work in the field of telematic arts explores the emergence of user-determined narratives between remote participants who are brought together within shared telepresent environments. Through the use of live chroma-keying, video projection and videoconference technology these geographically divided audience participants are composited live in intimate social spaces. This is essentially how all my installation projects function, where the public participant plays an integral part within these telematic experiments, whose engagement within them makes the 'Work' and their shared experiences of them creates the 'Art'. As an artist I am both designer of the environment and instigator of the narrative, which I determine through the social and political context that I choose to play out these telematic encounters.

"Sermon aims at expanding the senses of the user, while it is obvious that the other cannot really be touched but that only swift, decisive, possibly tenderly reactive movements can experience the suggestion of touch - a moment of contemplation, as many users observed. The synaesthetical, sensual impression lets the hand and the eye fuse, and it is this effect that characterizes his work." Oliver Grau, Media Art Net

Dr Maria Sourbati is the research lead for ‘Smart Infrastructure: Cities, Travel, Energy and Housing’ at the Centre for Digital Media Cultures. Sourbati's current research explores social implications of emerging technologies with a focus on mobility, age and data.

Maria has developed expertise in communications and social policy, new media and older people, digital media, smart mobility, and age relations. Maria's current research examines digital data, smart mobility and age relations as part of complex sets of relations of power that shape a person’s experience and social inclusion along time and other social markers of difference, including gender, race and class.

Her research has also examined tensions inherent in policy-driven diffusion of digital technologies and locally situated modes of engagement with ICTs. This strand investigates the politics of the digital switchover and user aspects in the 'digital by default' policy agenda from a social inclusion perspective. Maria’s earlier work on historically and technologically situated processes of media regulation has examined public service provision in electronic communications with a focus on diversity, universal access and media literacy.

Ryan Southall’s core research interests include the potential for the manipulation of open-source software tools to provide specific learning outcomes or experiences.

He is actively engaged in the incorporation of environmental simulation data into virtual design environments. This work has initially centred on the use of the modelling and animation tool Blender as a pre/post-processor for the lighting simulation software Radiance and the building performance simulation softwareEnergyPlus. Radiance and EnergyPlus are powerful and accurate simulation tools which both lack an easy-to-use interface. By creating an intermediary interface called the VI-Suitewithin Blender, with the scripting language Python and based upon Blender's scriptable nodes, the geometry and materiality of a scene can be easily created, and the results visualised in-situ. See VI-Suite project website.

In conjunction with this digital approach Ryan Southall is interested in parallel physical processes, for example, the recreation of accurate physical lighting conditions for the illumination of physical models, where there are challenges in reproducing accurate physical simulation of sunlight in a compact and cost-effective way. This investigation of creating physical sunlight conditions with commodity electronics involved collaboration with Glenn Longden-Thurgood.

Dr Southall is also developing innovative physical components for 'Smart' natural ventilation systems. 

Dr Southall's other recent research activities include running the CEBE funded project 'LightLab - Where Environment Meets Design'. This project utilised High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging, which allowed students to capture their own real lighting conditions and then apply them as illumination sources to their virtual models. A journal paper resulted form this project and was published by CEBE Transactions (http://cebe.cf.ac.uk/transactions/index.php).

My research is centred very broadly around the psychological side of migration.

Using a variety of methodologies, the majority of my research focuses on ways to improve relationships between people of different backgrounds, and on improving health and well-being of ethnic and religious minority groups, particularly refugees. I like to explore these topics from a multidisciplinary and policy-focused perspective, for example by investigating how refugee resettlement policies can optimise integration and well-being of refugees. I am also investigating possibilities of using digital mental health interventions to improve refugee well-being. I have conducted research with a variety of majority and minority groups in the UK, the Netherlands, Canada, and Chile.

Dr. Julia Winckler's research sits across multiple strands:

• Photographic Archives, Memory & Migration

• Reactivating Archives through Artistic Interventions

• Photography and Critical Pedagogy

Julia's research investigates archival traces within the context of collective memory and migration narratives. Her key research question probes how neglected archival sources can reveal forgotten histories of great significance to our understanding of the present. Applying a creative and interpretive photographic approach, using photographs as tools to think about historical experience, multiple articulations of memory and meaning are expressed, with the aim of generating new academic knowledge. The author Ben Okri has described 'the artist [as] a conduit through which lost things are recovered' (2005). Julia's research methodology considers archival research as a material, embodied practice. Through extensive investigation in archives, she gathers materials and maps out a strategy and approach. She then travels to the sites that have historical significance for each project.

Through reactivation and visualisation using photography as the key medium, past memories are reframed and resituated in the present. Combining an archaeological with a genealogical approach, traces are documented; their significance to the present assessed, as some of the historical functions are lost or no longer important. The genealogical approach necessitates an investigation that starts in the present, a retracing of the journey, that is physical and experimental, setting up encounters and dialogues. Lost and recovered narratives have been a key theme of Julia's work to date. Memory and migration narratives of emigration (Two Sisters), exile and loss (Traces), exploration (Retracing Heinrich Barth), displacement (Leaving Atlantis), expedition/peregrination (My Canadian Pilgrimage) and interwar home-making (Fabricating Lureland)  have been visualized and probed using the language of photography. These projects have been disseminated through public exhibitions, at conferences, exhibition catalogue publications and public engagement workshops, as well as informing Julia's teaching practice.

Julia has undertaken extensive work with and within communities to enable broader access to personal cultural heritage amongst disadvantaged areas and demographics. She has sought to improve inclusivity of knowledge production and to reanimate disconnected or underdeveloped narratives and histories. Oscillating between photographic and archival research, she uses photography as a medium through which collective memories can be reconstructed and given a renewed cultural presence.

My research explores ubiquitous computing and machine learning applications in the contexts of education, cultural heritage and public engagement. Taking a human-computer interaction perspective, it investigates issues around awareness, engagement, agency and digital inclusion in pervasive and intelligent computing environments. Visit my profile page to browse current and past projects.

My research currently focuses on the relationship between the community living and working in Castello, one of the 4 historic districts of Cagliari (Italy), and their own heritage, with a special interest on this community’s perception of the scars left in the area by WWII. This research will also explore the idea of heritage as personal and collective memory, but also the different definitions of heritage between heritage professionals and communities.

Ada Xiaoyu Hao (b. 1993) is a performance artist-researcher whose practice engages fiction, techno-biographical inquiries, multimedia technology and philosophy with performance. She currently focuses on creating a theoretical framework that uses performance as the main methodological formulation to develop a series of processual, participatory and intersubjective engagements with the immanent possibility of being and becoming through role-playing. Probing the boundaries between fact and fiction while playing with the ambiguous relationship between the documentation and the performance as the common thread in her practice, she suggests a speculative envisaging of the concept of the self in a post-humanistic vision that challenges our perception of becoming, adaption, and sustainability. She is currently finishing a practice-based Ph.D. in Doctoral School of Art & Communication, at the University of Brighton, titled: A Production of Multiple Becomings of Subjectivity, supervised by Professor Paul Sermon and Professor Duncan Bullen.

My PhD research is funded by the ESRC's South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership. The research will investigate the relationship between the consumption of gig-economy goods and services and the social pathology of alienation. The aim is to undertake a comparative study of the UK and Iceland, conducting interviews and focus groups, to illuminate how consumption and alienation within the gig-economy environment is experienced in different societal contexts. 

My research is in the state of flow and transcendence in the experience of screendance. This is a PaR research and my body of work will be mainly in film and visual arts, featuring movement and dance, and predominantly concerned with the felt creative experience, its transference and interconnection between artist as filmmaker and performer and the implications for the viewer.

My ESRC South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership funded PhD project considers the future of smart meters in the UK, their implications for energy justice and how policy may mitigate potential injustices in the future.

Current research into smart meters has highlighted how policy expects this technology to actively engage end users with their energy consumption, allowing them to make more active choices of energy usage. However, energy usage in the home is often invisible and wrapped up in energy intensive practices. I intend to create a workshop using visual methods to make visible practices surrounding meters and their connection to the wider energy infrastructure. From here, participants will be supported to ideate on potential smart meter futures and begin discussing issues of fairness and justice. Data produced during these workshops will be analysed to consider what policies could be put in place to mitigate potential injustices caused by a smart meter future.

I am an artist, writer and researcher based in North Herefordshire, UK. My creative interests use photography to explore the relationship between humans and the natural world through a research-based practice. Inspired the by increased popularity in the concept of plant-intelligence, particularly in a world in which climate concern and anxiety is an ever increasing norm, I use traditional and alternative modes of photography to interrogate how humans conceptualise the plant-kingdom through mythological, scientific and cultural practices. 

This is specifically explored in my part-time, practice-based PhD project titled ‘Photosymbiosis: Towards a Photographic Method of Collaboration with England's Heritage Oak Trees’, which uses traditional and alternative modes of photographic practice to examine the role of twelve heritage oak trees, through the lens of scientific research that considers the agency and intelligence of plants. By involving the oak tree within the creative process, whether through its material (its soil, bark, or leaves, for example) or biological functions, my practice seeks to (re)centre the plant as a sensual being, while also acknowlodging certain tree's status as a cultural object, imbued with emotional, social, cultural, and political value that raise certain plants to heritage status.

Alterntatively, my written work often uses queer experiences of gender and sexuality, through the use of poetry and short-form prose, to investigate human relationships, relationships to place and personal events.

My PhD research is funded by the ESRC South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership.  I am investigating the outcomes for TV participants who feature in mental health interventions within factual television programmes.  This could be therapy such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or other activities like exercise, singing or decluttering. Examples of these kinds of programmes include The Vertigo Road Trip (BBC1) and The Hoarder Next Door (Channel 4).    My research integrates theoretical frameworks from psychology, media and cultural studies, to analyse in-depth interviews with ex-TV participants, producers and therapists.  The aim is to better understand what makes participation successful, and what the challenges may be with a view to establishing good practice when working with participants with mental health issues.  In addition, this research provides a unique lens to consider psychosocial factors that influence the success of the therapeutic outcomes for participants involved, with wider relevance to other mental health initiatives and clinical practice.

My interest in these issues stems from 12 years of experience working in UK factual TV production -  filming skin graft operations, daredevils jumping out of balloons, and parenting interventions amongst other things.

PhD Thesis: AN ARTISTIC INQUIRY INTO DATA BODY AUGMENTATION AND POST-BIOLOGICAL IDENTITY

This thesis examines Post-Biological Identity and Augmentation Aesthetics through  the Data Body Trader Art project, the establishment of The MIxed and Augmented Reality Art Organisation and the iterative processes, outcomes and conclusions resulting from these endeavours. Specifically, this research aims to present a body of artist practice that focuses on Augmentation Aesthetics, in order to create works of Art that enable better understandings of Post-Biological Identity. This is achieved through the creation of artworks and practice-based research endeavours that focus on the relationship between bodies of matter, data bodies, and their augmentation in embodied, interactive scenarios. This thesis expands these claims to demonstrate through Art, how by having bodies that are both material and virtual, humans are bio-digitally convergent and therefore Post-Biological, and how this requires a reconfiguring of current methods for discourse and representation in these fields. 

This thesis presents a practice-based research journey through these discourses, with a particular focus on embedding Augmentation Aesthetics and Post-Biological Identity within the history of art, embodiment and media, identifying and addressing previous gaps in knowledge and practice-based research models. Following an introduction to the field and its place within artistic practice, a hybrid set of terms and a bespoke practice-based, iterative methodology that was developed will be presented, along the outcomes of these being put into practice, specifically through the Data Body Trader artwork and more expansively through MARArt.org. Through a process of iterative practice-based research, several new conclusions are established and presented in the form of artworks, exhibitions, interviews, invited papers and panel discussions. Furthermore, by undertaking a socially engaged approach to the development and presentation of its outcomes through marart.org, this research pivots from historical examples and recent arbitrary iterations of augmentation, towards a more expansive contemporary understanding of the term, in order to better define the field and the artist’s own practice. 

These outcomes make several original contributions to knowledge, offering both an artistic project and an organisational approach that explore and present Post-Biological Identity through the lens Augmentation Aesthetics, in other words, an aesthetics that focuses on entangling the physical and metaphysical, through liminal artistic practice. This allows not only for a better understanding of these fields, but also to function as a point of reference for further research and development.  By presenting methods of production and proliferation of bodies, as both data and flesh at the same time through Augmentation Aesthetics, this thesis offers a redefining of our understandings of human representation, more specifically trans-individuality, bio-digitally convergent bodies and this emergent concept of the Data Body. The thesis is concluded by framing this research within the wider discourses of immersive media art, Bio-Art and how these perpetuate extended human experiences of self, forcing us to reconsider how we engage with and consider them both in the wake of new innovative approaches and more speculatively into the future.