PhD in arts and creative practices, UK

My supervisory interests lie in the development of new approaches to Graphic Design pedagogy. I have expertise in typography, printing, editorial design and graphic systems and conventions. I'm especially interested in the emergence of new approaches to the landscape of contemporary Graphic Design practice and how the role of the Graphic Design has shifted towards a bricoleur approach to contempory communication. Graphic Design is a pervasive subject that is integrated in our daily lives, but arguably the subject of little critical enquiry. An emerging research community and unified research clustering is beginning to address this shortfall, and Doctorate Level study will help to further this body of knowledge.

I am interested in supervising on enquries into:

• Graphic Design practice, both as an act of creation but also as a force for change;

• The changing topography of the Graphic Design landscape, and the changes to the 'role' of the graphic Designer as a contemporary communicator and creator;

• Shifts in typographic practice and relationships of Graphic Design to the broader influences of social and economic factors including globalisation and homogenisation;

• The role of communication as an emerging research practice;

• Self regulation and ‘rule’ or convention generation with in the industry;

• The role of ‘play’ and ‘failure’ in design Graphic Design practice, and in particular how these actions are navigated and understood by learners and educators;

• The emergence of alternative, less formal approaches to education and the role of the ‘Art School’ in this developing landscape.

I am interested in supervising PhD students in the following areas: performance and photographic practices and theories, process-led photographic research, photography and phenomenology, photography and place, photography environment and catastrophe, dark room and hybrid practices (analogue, digital, AI). 

Current PhD supervision includes:

• 'Feminism in Cameraless Photography Practice Today: From the Photogram to AI-generated imagery'
• 'Place, photographer & print, an entanglement'

I welcome PhD supervisees from across arts practice and sociology, particularly in art and culture as they intersect with social research into race, racialisation and whiteness.

My approach to supervision is grounded in critical pedagogy and student-centred learning. I provide an open, supportive, and generous space for discussing ideas, in which we can learn from each other and discover new ideas and methods together.

Please feel welcome to email me if you would like to informally discuss your research proposal.

My work investigates the role of entrepreneurship in the development of creative careers as a business owner and researcher. This has included investigating the gap between education and employment for creative practitioners as well as exploring models of learning to support entrepreneurial development.

Current and recent PhD students:

Claire Dawson - An exploration for clothing reuse in the circular economy (2023 -  present)

Martin Irorere -  Sustainability in making material innovation in textiles, for the circular model in the fashion industry (2021 - 2023) 

Erika Wong – Art World Hegemony and Access: Competing Perspectives on the Value of The Creative Class (2016 – 2020) Brighton University

Veerapong Klangpremjit – Interactive Packaging Development (2014 – 2020) University for the Creative Arts

Akapan Thienthaworn – Design Management in UK and Thai SMEs (2011 – 2019) University for the Creative Arts (completed)

My supervisory interests include fine art, video, multi-media installation, sound, voice, performance, site-specific art and cultural histories of technology.

Postgraduate supervision in Textiles, Fashion, Fashion Communication, Drawing, encompassing embodied materiality, my work in handmade paper and practice-based, installation art. More recently,  substantial research as co-investigator with an AHRC project in sustainabile materials in Fashion and Textiles. I am interested in waste in the Fashion, Textiles, Accessories and Leather industries, together with materials, circular economy, reuse and repurposing.  

Recent PhD supervision:

University of Brighton - Claire Dawson - Research Title: 'Clothing Reuse in the Circular Econonmy: An exploration of the challenges and opportuniteis for UK high street fashion brands' - [March 2023 - July 2029]

University of Brighton - Martin Irorere - Research Title: 'Closing the Fashion Sustainability Gap through textile Recycling: Evaluation of UK Gen-Z consumer attitudes, knowledge, and acceptance of textile recycling'. - [March 2021 - July 2026]

Anglia Ruskin University - Amanda Lavis - Research Title: 'Woven Language: A practice-based research investigation Exploring the Textile Praxis in Children's Book Illustration' [March 2021 - expected completion 2025]

External PhD Viva examination experience, University of Chester October 2020 - Georgina Spry -  'A New Felt Presence: Making and Learning as part of a Community of Women Feltmakers' 

Doctoral student supervision and examination

Meaningfully Engaged? Exploring the particpatory arts practices of adults with profound and multiplul learning disabilities (PMLD)  PhD Thesis by Melaneia Warwick completed in 2018

External examiner, Royal Holloway, Janyne Lloyd, PhD thesis title The Role of Reminiscence Arts in the Lives of Care Home Residents Living with Dementia 2016

I have supervised and examined students relating to social and sustainable design (and the link between them), arts and wellbeing utlising practice based methods.

I welcome supporting projects that explore materials and making / materials and meaning making / material innovation, the valorisation of waste (through design and making) and circular economies. I lead research projects that engage design and making in the context of biodiversity, nature recovery, arts, health and well-being and social empowerment as well as the co-design and use of craft, design and technology in empowering disengaged and / or marginalised groups and communities in neighbourhood development and participatory planning.

My PhD supervisory interests are in Digital Media Arts and Visual Communication. My specific research interests cover interactive storytelling, augmented reality, digital and tangible media,  open interaction, play, participation, immersive environments, virtual reality and 360 video, audience agency and sustainability.

In addition to fine art practice, I'm interested in consciousness studies, philosophy of mind, ontology and religious stuies such as Buddhist philosophy. My own PhD covered continental thought, such as phenomenology, poststructuralism, Derrida and Deleuze, but also philosophy of science.

I'm Interested in supervising PhD and MRes students in the following areas: feminist photographic practices and theories, queer methodologies, queer photographic practices and theories, queer activism and representation, new materialism, posthumanism, photography and ontology, process-led photographic research (analogue, digital, AI).

Current PhD supervision includes:

• 'Feminism in Cameraless Photography Practice Today: From the Photogram to AI-generated imagery'
• 'Contemporising Photoliterature: the human body as a way of deconstructing narrative – plurimodalism and bodywriting, from life writing to live writing'

Helen supervises PhD and MD students with an interest in arts-based interventions in healthcare, education and wellbeing, and/or the use of creative, arts-based research methods.  She is interested in talking to doctoral applicants who are interested in researching creativity and the arts, with foci including: art therapy; arts interventions for health and wellbeing, including invisible chronic and contested conditions; social prescribing; creativity and the lived experience of dementia; arts education; spoken word and poetry slam; art worlds/communities; arts inclusivity; everyday creativity; and the artistic process.   She is also interested in supervising students who wish to work with creative, arts-based and/or participatory methods, including: poetic inquiry; autoethnography; photo voice; photo elicitation; collaborative poetics; and participatory action research.  Helen currently supervises four doctoral candidates, who are researching: the lived experiences of women with borderline personality disorder (including creative coping strategies); neurologic music therapy with young people with juvenile dementia; black people's experiences of intimacy and psychosis; and decolonial praxis in museum learning.  She has previously supervised and examined work covering topics that include: perceptions of frailty in the undergraduate medical curriculum; the impact of austerity policies on homeless people; spoken word with young offenders in a Macedonian prison; the performance and perception of authenticity in contemporary UK spoken word poetry; and NHS staff experiences of work. 

My supervisory interests are in the methods and contextual study of practices in drawing, painting, performance, sculpture, installation and public art. This includes also the intersection of art and exhibitionary practices with environmental and political activist strategies and tactics (in an interdisciplinary sense). Previous supervisory experience has related to European, South- and South East Asian film and artists’ moving image in its historical context (20th/21st centuries). I also have expertise in global experimental documentary film practices, particularly concerning authorial methods of the filmmakers (1990s-present) and patronage networks; transnationalism and debates around ‘trans-locationality’ in relation to global art practices/criticism and thinking around contemporary curation of film and visual arts.

All of the above mentorship also incorporates feminist, gender, intersectional and queer studies and transcultural perspectives in the arts and humanities as well as a familiarity with postcolonial art critical studies and theory. As a separate area of research, I have an interest in speculative fabulation as a creative, critical and art-making practice.

Dr Uschi Klein welcomes PhD proposals in the broad fields of photographic histories and practices, visual and material culture, memory studies, migration studies, resistance politics and marginalised communities. She is particularly, though not exclusively, interested in supervising research that investigates the lived experiences shaped by totalitarian systems in Eastern Europe. She encourages projects that engage critically with under‑represented perspectives, draw on innovative (visual) methodological approaches and contribute to widening and diversifying the understanding of visual and cultural histories.  

My main supervisory interests are in disability-led arts, inclusive arts research projects and arts with people living with dementia, older people or learning-disabled people and research that takes place in and responds to health and social care settings. I am interested in arts research that engages with participation, social engagement, remote or socially distanced practices and/or themes of presence, attention, care and sensory engagement.

I have supervised one PhD to completion: Dr Muna Al-Jawad, Using Comics-Based Practitioner Research in the Healthcare Humanities , 2024, and I am currently supervising Jo Bell (PhD, School of Art and Media) with Amy Cunningham. I have acted as internal examiner for Dr Victoria Painting’s PhD: Reperforming the Fourth Age: Moving Beyond a Prevailing Construct of Abjection, Lack of Agency and Failure. I have been part of annual progression review panels for three PhD students.

Simon is interested in postgraduate supervision in journalism and media studies. He is particularly keen on projects that explore professional and citizen journalism, digital and social media practice, blogging and influencer cuture, media analysis, sports journalism, sports communication and sports media. 

My supervisory interests cover the emerging areas of Illustration as an expanded field of practice including GIFs, animation, and the burgeoning self-publishing scene, through to traditional forms of graphic storytelling. I am interested in enquiries into situated illustration, both in terms of site specific work and ethnographic approaches, to how illustrators can use technology to go beyond the printed page. The importance of drawing as means of enquiry is another interest alongside performative aspects of live transcriptions and the use of workshops to engage with communities.

One of my key passions is working with PhD students on creative practice, autoethnography and creative writing pedagogy. I have supported doctoral students working on transdisciplinary projects and work that seeks to challenge conventional academic discourse. At the moment, I am honoured to be working with students who are looking at queering the colonial, creativity (image and text), evolving archives with found poetry, Santiago de Cuba as a moving archive, feminist romance, autoethnographic arts-based work, stories from care, autoethnographic work seeking social change, identity and hybridity in fiction, and queer bodies in performance.

I supervise projects in contemporary art practice that engage critically with feminist perspectives and histories, cultural politics, and the politics of representation. I welcome research that interrogates the institutions of art practice and art education, explores the intersections of lived experience with visual and material culture, and/or addresses the shifting conditions of media and technology and visual/digital  experience. 

I have supervised 14 PhD students to completion and am currently supervising 6 PhD students. My research and supervisory interests cover subjects related to Fine Art, Digital Media, Performance, and Visual Communications. My PhD students have been undertaking practice-based research in a range of specific areas, such as digital storytelling, interactive media, virtual reality and networked performance art. In my role as a PhD supervisor and Doctoral Studies Lead in the School of Art and Media, I bring our PhD students together through collaborative workshops, symposia and exhibitions, such as the group PhD show ‘Digital Encounters’ for the British Science Festival, Brighton in September 2017. I have had eight PhD completions at Brighton to date, as well as five external completions, and I continue to gain PhD Viva experience, with over thirteen PhD external examiner appointments. I provide guidance on practice-based research using reflective practice processes, primarily based on the experiential learning cycle, action research methods, reflection-in and -on practice, specialising in digital and interactive arts, performance and installation practices. Unique experiences and specialisms involve video recall interview techniques for video performance and installation art.