PhD studentships AHRC Landscape Award

Tom Ainsworth is the Subject Area Lead for Architecture and Design and the MA Sustainable Design Course Leader. His supervisory interests are Social and Environmental Justices, Progressive and Disruptive Design Research, and Design for Health and Wellbeing.

Current Supervision

Chantal Spencer, University of Brighton. Working Title: Moving Beyond Participatory Models to Methodologies of Radical Intersectional Equity. University of Brighton Funded Scholarship.

Kristen Bullivant, University of Brighton. Working Title: Designing Sustainable Food Futures: a design anthropological approach to cultural value and culinary capital in shaping ‘sustainable’ diets. AHRC funded.

Sally Sutherland, University of Brighton. Working title: Design, Culture and Gender Matters: An Exploration of Design as a Socio-material Tool for UK Public Breastfeeding Research. AHRC Design Star funded.

Conferrals

Merryn Haynes-Gadd, University of Brighton. Thesis Title: Emotional Durability Design Nine: Developing a tool for product longevity. AHRC Design Star funded.

Examinations

PhD Examination, Giovanni Marmont, University of Brighton. Title: Nanopoetics of Use: Kinetic prefiguration and dispossessed sociality in the undercommons. AHRC Design Star funded

PhD Examination, Catherine Speight, University of Brighton. Title: Looking Understanding and Making Meaning: HE Ceramics Students as a ‘Community of Learners’. AHRC Funded.PhD Examination, Tobias Mulling, University of Brighton. Title: Embracing the Gestural Interface: Designing and Evaluating a Mid-air Gestural Approach based on Manipulation.

I’m interested in supervising practice-based PhDs, particularly those that are interdisciplinary and combine aspects of art practice and theory with architecture/urban studies/spatial practice alongside other disciplines and practices (and may have a socially engaged or participatory element), and which might explore themes of migration, heritage, contested space and regeneration.

Current PhD Students: 

Ilenia Atzori: From ruins to community heritage: The role of storytelling in building a collective memory

Antony Dixon: Here is where we meet (Body, Matter and Things): A sensory investigation, through co-creative practice, of the misplaced and found.

Jessica Melville-Brown: Co-designing the future: An exploration into the development of new methods for creative engagement, examining the influence of gender roles, socio-economic and ethno-cultural factors in the co-design process with young people.

PhD Examinations: 

James O'Leary: Interface Architecture: Towards the transformation of Belfast's 'Peacewalls' through Situated Practice (Internal Examiner)

Jina Lee: Drawing ‘New Maps’: Critical Cartography and Ethnographical Enquiry Through Drawing Practice (External Examinar)

M Phil examinations:

Lida Driva: The Operation of the Hidden. Towards an understanding of architectural and urban space: the case of Omonia Square (External Examiner)

Sue is based at the University of Brighton Design Archives and supervises research using archives in art and design history and practice; and on twentieth century British art and design and their contexts, with a particular focus on the mid-century. She supervises Masters and Doctorate projects, and is happy to hear from potential students with complementary interests.

I always welcome conversations about research, and am especially interested in those that adopt and interdisciplinary approach and feature some kind of creative practice within their work. I would be delighted to supervise work around, but by no means limited to: comics studies, folklore and landscape, visual cultures, witch narratives and representations, horror in literature, film and comics and the Gothic.

Professor Doyle has supervised doctoral work on creative and visual climate change communication and engagement, media discourses of environment, gender and popular culture, branding and consumption. She would be happy to supervise work on any aspect of:

* climate and environmental communication 

* creative climate communication and engagement

* media, popular culture and environment

* climate activism and social movements

* visual climate and environmental communication

* veganism, popular culture/media and ethics

* intersectional feminist ecological ethics

Completed students, awarded the degree of PhD:

Dr Viktoria Erlacher-Downing (2024). 'Climate change and mental health: a co-produced, transformative study with young people in Blackpool'. University of Brighton                                                                   

Dr Kate Monson (2024). ‘Staying with the muddle: learning to live well on anthropocene island’. University of Brighton.

Dr Shai Kassirer (2020). ‘Media Analysis of Hydro-Policies for Climate-Resilience in Israel: Depoliticisation of Desalination Discourse (2001-2018)’. University of Brighton.

Dr Lucy O’Brien (2018). ‘Express Yourself: Reframing women’s participation, agency and power in popular music’. PhD by Publication. University of Brighton.

Dr Antigoni Themistokleous (2018). ‘Self regulation by the press in Cyprus’. University of Brighton.

Dr Chloe Peacock (2013). ‘Double Distinction’: An analysis of consumer participation in Apple branding’. University of Brighton.

Dr Joanna Boehnert (2012). ‘The Visual Communication of Ecological Literacy’. University of Brighton.

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' 

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.

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.

Dr Grant Ferguson's current doctoral supervision includes projects on Aphra Behn, the Lucrece narrative in Early Modern literature and culture, performance and queer histories. She is always happy to hear from and advise prospective doctoral researchers, particularly in early modern literature, cultural history and its afterlives, including gendered cultural memory; early modern women's histories, writings and afterlives; Shakespeare studies (particularly appropriation, cultural memory and commemoration); early modern literary histories, gender and heritage.

I am interested in supervising film history projects, especially Hollywood history, including around stars and stardom, adjuncts to these such as movie magazines, performance and acting, film genres, especially romantic comedy, the female Gothic, and horror, and film costume.

(Digital) media theory, literary theory/history (esp. Virginia Woolf, Anglophone and European modernisms, and post-1850s receptions of Hellenism); deconstruction, ethics, ontology, feminism, mourning, narrative, nationalism(s), death, loss, and memory. 

Current PhD/MPhil supervision

Sylvie Jane Lewis (lead supervisor - live) / techne-funded / themes / topics:  fairies and shyness in early modernist anglophone literature and early cinema https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/sylvie-lewis/  

Jack Maginn (lead supervisor – live) / themes / topics: Virginia Woolf, time, queer theory, Continental philosophy https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/jack-maginn   

Kate Anthony (lead supervisor – live) / themes / topics: digital memes, the American alt-right, nationalism, Christian fundamentalism  https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/katherine-anthony

My main supervisory interests are in the understanding and applications of drawing in clinical settings, the use of drawing as a tool of learning, approaches to arts/health research, the relationship between drawing and writing and creative/visual research methods.

I am currently supervising:

Vanessa Marr (PhD, School of Art and Media) with Jessica Moriarty;  

Caehryn Tinker (PhD, School of Art and Media) with Heidi von Kurthy and Kay Aranda;

James Murray (PhD, School of Art and Media) with Duncan Bullen, and;

Lindsay Sekulowicz (AHRC Collaborative Doctorate, School of Humanities and Social Science) with Claire Wintle at Brighton, William Milliken and Mark Nesbitt at Kew Gardens and Luciana Martins at Birkbeck.

I worked for a 3 year period as a learning mentor for a PhD student in the School of Art and Media. They completed successfully in February 2024.

I have supervised 6 PhD students: Dr Duncan Bullen, Singularity of Present Moment Awareness: Drawing as Mindfulness, Mindfulness as Drawing, 2025; Dr Muna Al-Jawad, Using Comics-Based Practitioner Research in the Healthcare Humanities, 2024; Dr Simon Bliss, Jewellery, Silver and the Applied and Decorative Arts in the Culture of Modernism, 2019; Dr Gavin Fry, Male textile artists in 1980s Britain: a practice based inquiry into their reasons for using this medium, 2018; Dr Curie Scott, Elucidating perceptions of ageing through participatory drawing: a phenomenographic approach, 2018; Dr Sarah Haybittle, Correspondence, trace and the landscape of narrative: a visual, verbal and literary dialectic, 2015.

I have been an independent chair for two PhD examinations (Andrew Cross and Ada Hao) and have examined eight PhDs: Joy Mower, Canterbury Christ Church University, 2024 (external); Mingyi Wang, University of Brighton, 2023 (internal examiner); Jane Shepard, University of Brighton, 2022 (internal examiner); Melissa Cheung, University of Sydney, Australia, 2019 (external examiner); Louisa Buck, University of Brighton, 2018 (internal examiner); Samantha Lynch, University of Brighton, 2018 (internal examiner); Mike Sadd, University of Brighton, August 2015 (internal examiner); Tanja Golja, University of Technology Sydney, Australia, January 2012 (external examiner).

I've acted as internal examiner for three MRes students: Claire Scanlon, 2019; Diana Brighouse, 2015; and Mark Lander, 2014.

I have also been an independent reader for MPhil/PhD transfers and Annual Progression Review reader for 5 students.

Annebella supervises PhDs in visual and material culture; photographic history, theory and practice; Mass Observation methods and sources; museum and collecting cultures; art and design history including fashion and dress; everyday / vernacular / folk cultures and countercultures. She has supervised 13 doctoral students to completion, including PhDs by publication, practice and in partnership with museums. She has examined 28 PhD theses internationally. She welcomes new students.

Rebecca supervises students researching contemporary British History. She has particular expertise in the history of housing, the politics of twentieth and twenty first century Britain, the history of sexuality and gender, and the impact of war on society. She works with students across social, political, cultural and economic history and with students specialising in politics, sociology or philosophy who want to incorporate historical analysis into their research. 

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. 

I am interested in supervising doctoral students on a range of topics and themes including smart technologies, age relations, ICT access and mobility, digital inclusion, digital literacies, digital inequality and transport-related exclusion.

My past PhD supervision includes projects in media diversity, media regulation, e-government.

Current PhD supervision

Sijuade Olanihun Yusuf (International PhD Studentship) - Social media and negotiation of identity by African Women in Sub-Saharan African countries.

Vicki Painting - How might the ‘orphaned body’ of my mother living through the fourth age be represented other than within the prevailing construct of abject, unproductive and ultimately unsuccessful ageing?

Sarah Stevens supervisory interests sit within the exploration of relational, time sensitive and dynamic design.

Current Supervision

Terry Meade, working title: Drawing Out Occupation: a study of how drawing may be used to reveal and clarify spatial complexities in a conflict zone.

Joy Xin, working title: Observing London and Beijing via Mrs Dalloway and Rickshaw Boy.' An exploration of the potential of novels for revealing histories of movement and interaction within urban analysis. 

Examinations 

PhD Examination, Francesco Pomponi, University of Brighton. Title: Operational performance and life cycle assessment of double skin façades for office refurbishments in the UK 

PhD Examination, Yahya Ibraheem, University of Brighton. Title: Integrated Facade Systems for highly- to fully-glazed office buildings in hot and arid climates  

PhD Examination, Sabrina Barbosa, University of Brighton. Title: Thermal performance of naturally ventilated office buildings with double skin façade under Brazilian climate conditions 

My research centres around the relationship between the designed environment and the politics of action, particularly in relation to issues of embodiment and the ideology of the made world. I am interested in the history of ergonomics, the material culture of the British pub and the implications of cybernetic research. I take a transdisciplinary approach to the study of design, including methodologies such as design history, design studies, anthropology, social and cognitive psychology, and philosophy. I am interested in supervising projects concerned with design activism, social design, critical approaches to design, emotion and design, affect and design practice, the politics of design history, craft practice, and the relationship between design, craft and other disciplines. 

Julia Winckler's interdisciplinary research focuses on working with visual archives and collections. Memory and migration narratives, contested topographies, exile studies, co-production of knowledge and photography & activism are particular areas of interest. 

For PhD applicants:

Winckler currently co-supervises six Phd students at the University of Brighton and one Phd student at the University of Salzburg. Two of these Phd projects are practice-based; one is Techne funded, a second is an AHRC CPD studentship. 

Winckler welcomes Phd inquiries that interact with any of the following: 

Working with Archives and Collections: Photographic archives, Community archives, Museums, Private Collections

Memory Studies: Postmemory, transnational memory, cultural memory, communicative memory, personal memory

Art practice as research: visual, creative and ethnographic research methods/photo voice/photo elicitation/digital media technologies, site-specific interventions

Co-production of knowledge: popular education methodology, participatory methods, oral history, histoire croisée/regards croisés methodologies

Photography and activism: community art practice (global, historical & contemporary) and critical pedagogy

Photographers in Exile in Britain: contributions made by emigrés to the field of Applied Arts

Dr Wintle welcomes enquiries about projects on museums, exhibition design, collecting, cultural forms of imperialism, nationalism and decolonisation, especially in Britain, and the material and visual culture of South Asia.

Claire has supervised six PhDs to completion and currently supervises seven AHRC-funded PhD students. She has examined postgraduate theses at SOAS, Leicester University, Royal Holloway, Sheffield Hallam University, the University of Southampton and a further eight PhDs at the University of Brighton. Her students focus on themes ranging from British South Asian community engagement with museums to the professional experiences of museum staff working to decolonise practice. She works with colleagues at the British Museum, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the Horniman Museum and the V&A to supervise Collaborative Doctoral Projects on subjects including the British Museum's relationships with museums in West Africa, South Asian donors to the British Museum, exhibition design at the British Museum and Korean collections at the V&A. She also works with colleagues at Shiv Nagar University in India to supervise a PhD project on Bihar Museum.