Digital media PhD | Digital cultures PhD

PhD students across digital culture, digital media and digital innovation benefit from a supervisory team with two or three members of staff, allowing them to draw directly on staff’s engagement in a wide range of research projects. Depending on your research area, you may also have an additional external supervisor from another School, another research institution, or from the industry.

Our postgraduate research students have the opportunity to be engaged in a range of activities, including involvements in research centres, organising research events, and contributing to aspects of media research culture. As a PhD student you will also receive training by the Brighton Doctoral College and have the opportunity to join an extensive network of PhD students across the University. You will be part of a vibrant research community at the heart of Britain’s digital and creative industry. 

All students are provided with access to desk space and computers. You will additionally benefit from access to a range of electronic resources via the university’s online library, as well as to the physical book and journal collections housed within the Aldrich Library and other campus libraries. PhD students based in the School of Media also have access to cutting-edge facilities such as the Watts Lab, the Digital Catapult Centre Brighton and its projects such as the 5G Testbed and a forthcoming Data, Privacy, Ethics & Nudge Lab on campus, and the Screen Archive South East.

Recent and current PhD students have been successful in obtaining studentships covering both fees and living costs through the University of Brighton’s involvement in the AHRC TECHNE, the ESRC SCDTP and the EPSRC SEAHA. Please get in touch with your chosen supervisor to discuss your research project idea and possible ways to fund your Doctoral research.

The City of Brighton and Hove gives our PhD students access to one of the UK’s most lively media economies. We foster research that takes advantage of these relationships with a history of community-engagement and industry-based research projects.

You will be based with the academics of specialist Centres of Research and Enterprise Excellence and/or Research and Enterprise Groups. These give both supervisory opportunities and the chance to network with both theorists and practitioners.

Our researchers explore how digital media impacts upon everyday life, such as its contribution to future cities through intelligent/sustainable services such as transport and social care, and ubiquitous surveillance. We also pay attention to emerging technologies and social change, exploring social media and activism, science and technology, digital health, digital citizenship, policy, governance and education, as well as the arts and the creative industries. Our focus is on matters of exclusion, inclusion, identity formation, specifically through the analytical lenses of ageing, class, disability, gender and sexuality.

The role of digital culture and digital media in political, social and environmental activism, and in the creation of online/offline communities are also a focus of our research. The nature of audiences and their engagements with digital media are explored through podcasting, news, and feminist- and inclusion-oriented approaches to gaming cultures. Researchers at the University of Brighton use a range of methodologies and theoretical approaches in their research but we pay close attention to qualitative research, ethnography and everyday life, audience research, informed by feminist, LGBT and queer theory, and contemporary theoretical debates in digital media and data technologies.

Creative media practice is another focus of research in the School of Art and Media. This includes both theoretical and practice-based research around Digital Transformation Design, Digital and Interactive Arts/Music/Sound, Photography, Immersive Media (AR/VR), Creative Industries, and many more. As a PhD student, you can draw on staff expertise in both critical creative media practice and theoretical perspectives.

PhD students could pursue research in a wide range of media and communication topics. The following areas of digital and media culture research indicate some of our areas of research expertise.

• Blockchain, cloud computing, the sharing economy
• Cultural informatics
• Data technologies and digital culture
• Digital humanities
• Digital media and activism
• Game studies
• Immersive media/AR/VR
• Innovation and media/Creative industries
• Interactive and digital arts/music/sound
• Screen cultures
• Selfies and identity
• Smart mobility and intelligent Transport
• Social media
• Sound and music practices

For more detail about these research areas please check the following links and also the supervisors' profiles below:

• Centre for Digital Cultures and Innovation
• Creative Sound and Music Research and Enterprise Group
• Screen Studies Research and Enterprise Group

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou welcomes PhD projects examining: arts and health; art and science; AI and society; big data & society; critical public health communication and health promotion; gender, sexuality and technology; feminist STS;  robots and society; young people and digital technologies; mental health and technology; innovative and interdisciplinary methodologies; digital inclusion; activism; participatory action research; citizen data.

Current PhD Students

• Hannah Shelby (ESRC South Coast DTP Scholarship in the Population Change, Health and Wellbeing pathway) (2017-2020). Theme: Mental health and Reality TV.
• Jun Haelin (2018-2021). Theme: National identity, gender and use of YouTube in South Korean. 

• Sijuade Olanihun Yusuf (International PhD Studentship) (2019-2022). Theme: Social media and negotiation of identity by African Women in Sub-Saharan African countries

• Alex Yousif (ESRC Artificial Intelligence and Society PhD Studentship, South Coast DTP) (2020-2023). Theme: Algorithmic bias, gender and health and social care 

Indicative Masters and Undergraduate projects supervised:

• The role of social media influencers in the promotion of sports and wellbeing
• Representation of gender in Disney films
• Audience perceptions of privacy and data collection on Facebook 
• Understandings of bisexuality in social media 
• Feminist activism and Twitter: #Metoo hashtag
• Representation of queer characters in Call the Midwife. 
• Gender in reality TV: The case of Only Way is Essex   

Dr Olu Jenzen

Dr Jenzen has supervised several doctoral students to completion across topics such as Queer visual activism; Queer filmmaking and learning disability; and Social media and LGBTQ+ mental health support. Currently she supervises projects on Feminist social media activism; LGBTQ+ kinship practices; Gender creative parenting; Gender diverse youth and citizen equality; Climate justice discourse in the media; Gypsy, Romany, Traveller trans and gender-diverse youth in the UK & participatory heritage as a vehicle for empowerment; and Heritage, participation and technology. She welcomes applications for projects interested in digital media and visual activism, activism and issues of gender and sexuality, and youth empowerment.

Dr Ewan Kirkland

Ewan is looking to supervise doctoral projects on digital games, children’s media, fandom, animation and science fiction/fantasy.

Dr Douglas McNaughton

Political economy of television production. Aesthetics and narrative in television. Historical development of British television. Representations of space, place and identities in British screen cultures. Science fiction, fantasy and horror, in particular, British folk horror. Telefantasy, world cinema, screen technologies, the sociology of space. Screen acting and performance.

Dr Maria Sourbati

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?

Dr Marcus Winter

I am interested in supervising postgraduate research students in ubiquitous computing, human-computer interaction and applied machine learning in the contexts of education, cultural heritage and public engagement.

For further supervisory staff including cross-disciplinary options, please visit research staff on our research website.