Media and communications PhD

Media and communication studies is a multi-faceted research area that examines the ways in which the media represent and influence our social, cultural and political lives. Research in media and communications critically analyses the role of media institutions, as well as the changing landscape of media industries and cultural production.

The University of Brighton fosters a thriving community of theorists and practitioners in the development of new knowledge around media cultures, technologies and practices. Our research examines audiences and reception, television and screen studies, digital media, gender and communication, communication and democracy, as well as media history, policy and law. We are ideally placed to offer supervisory support in this diverse and complex area, drawing on the methodologies from both the research staff at the school and related disciplines university-wide.

Research is supported through specialist centres and groups. Our researchers are involved at an organisational level in the Centre for Digital Cultures and Innovation, the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender; also the Cultural Informatics Research and Enterprise Group, Screen Studies Research and Enterprise Group and Photography in Practice; Photography in Theory Research and Enterprise Group.

Through these specialist centres and groups, research expertise covers a wide range of topics that engage with critical issues around media and communication. Critical investigations of media phenomena or practice-based work through digital arts and sciences, photography and film can also be aligned to cross-disciplinary work with, for example, arts practices, architecture, heritage technologies, cultural studies, human geography, politics and philosophy.

The university supports Media and communications PhD students to research their area of interest across a wide spectrum of media research, drawing on the expertise of cutting-edge academic research.

Our PhD graduates move onto work within and outside academia.

Apply through our portal: 'Arts and Media.'

Our registration system collects several programmes under the strand 'Arts and Media.' Please choose this option in the portal.

Apply with us for funding through the AHRC Techne Doctoral Training Partnership

Key information

As a Media and Communication PhD student, you will benefit from:

a supervisory team comprising two or sometimes three members of academic staff. Depending on your research specialism you may also have supervisors from different schools, another research institution, or an external partner from government or industry.
access to desk space and computers.
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 also have access to cutting-edge facilities such as the Watts Lab 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 and the ESRC SCDTP programmes.

Research themes

Media and Communication research is the primary focus of our Centre for Digital Cultures and Innovation and informs the work of a number of other Centres of Research and Enterprise Excellence (COREs) at the university, including the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics and the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender.

With the support of these centres and departmental staff at the School of Art and Media, our students benefit from a productive academic network where media and communication inform diverse investigations. Our staff and postgraduate community critically engage with some of the most exciting and pressing issues of our time - they explore the effects of changes in media technologies and practices upon everyday life, the cultural and creative economy, politics, social well-being and identity.

Our researchers work at the local, national and global level. Engaging with diverse businesses, communities and policy actors including media, publishers, digital companies, community groups and NGOs is central to our approach. In addition to more traditional media and communication approaches, we encourage innovative, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches. Our research priorities include the areas ‘Digital culture and practice’, ‘Screen, image and visual culture’ and ‘Sound and spatial practice’.

The postgraduate community comprises a diverse group of young scholars that engage in both theoretical and practice-based research. Our postgraduate students have the opportunity to be engaged in a range of activities, including involvements in research centres, organising research events, contributing the School of Media research culture and getting teaching experience.

PhD students could pursue research in a wide range of media and communication topics. Our current areas of research expertise include:

Digital Media
Data Culture
Environmental Communication
Game Studies
Community Media
Screen Cultures
Digital Transformations
Media Practice
Photography
Film Studies
Sound Studies and Music
Gender and Sexuality
Digital Humanities
Cultural Informatics
Creative Industries
Mobility and Transport
Activism
Popular Culture
Immersive Media/AR/VR
Creative Media
Innovation

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

Some of our supervisors

Prof Julie Doyle

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

* media, popular culture and environment

* creative approaches to climate engagement and systems change

* climate activism and social movements

* visual climate and environmental communication

* veganism, popular culture/media and ethics

* feminist ecological ethics

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 Paula Hearsum

Dr Hearsum welcomes students undertaking postgraduate research projects that are interested in all aspects of popular music studies, including (but not limited to) music journalism, explorations around music, sexuality and gender and the representations of death and mortality in both music and the wider media and cultural industries. Her methodological interests also include Critical Discourse Analysis and Oral History.

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 Theodore Koulouris

(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 supervision

1) Shai Kassirer (co-supervisor, completed) 'Media Analysis of Hydro-Policies for Climate-Resilience in Israel: Depoliticisation of Desalination Discourse (1990-2018)' (mediation of government policy, sustainability, resilience studies, neoliberalism, depoliticisation of public discourse) https://www.brighton.ac.uk/research-and-enterprise/postgraduate-research-degrees/research-students/shai-kassirer.aspx

2) Haelin Jun (lead supervisor – live ) / title: ‘North Korean Migrant Women’s Self-Mediated Femininity on YouTube, and its Cultural Capital in South Korea' (gender politics, digital self-representation) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Haelin_Jun

3) Jack Maginn (lead supervisor – live) / provisional title: 'Iterations of Queerness: Adaptations of Virginia Woolf's Life and Work in post-1990 Cinema' (time, Woolf, narrative) https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/jack-maginn

4) Katherine Anthony (lead supervisor – live) / topic: Digital memes and the American Alt-Right post-Trump https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/katherine-anthony

5) Amelia Phipps (co-supervisor – live) / topic: A Critique of Adriana Cavarero’s Inclinations (gender and sexual politics, feminisms, Contintental philosophy).

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 Julia Winckler

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 five 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

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

Making an application

You will apply to the University of Brighton through our online application portal. When you do, you will require a research proposal, references, a personal statement and a record of your education.

You will be asked whether you have discussed your research proposal and your suitability for doctoral study with a member of the University of Brighton staff. We recommend that all applications are made with the collaboration of at least one potential supervisor. Approaches to potential supervisors can be made directly through the details available online. If you are unsure, please do contact the Doctoral College for advice.

Please visit our How to apply for a PhD page for detailed information.

Fees and funding

Funding

Undertaking research study will require university fees as well as support for your research activities and plans for subsistence during full or part-time study.

Funding sources include self-funding, funding by an employer or industrial partners; there are competitive funding opportunities available in most disciplines through, for example, our own university studentships or national (UK) research councils. International students may have options from either their home-based research funding organisations or may be eligible for some UK funds.

Learn more about the funding opportunities available to you.

Tuition fees academic year 2023–24

Standard fees are listed below, but may vary depending on subject area. Some subject areas may charge bench fees/consumables; this will be decided as part of any offer made. Fees for UK and international/EU students on full-time and part-time courses are likely to incur a small inflation rise each year of a research programme.

MPhil/PhD
	Full-time	Part-time
UK	£4,712	£2,356
International (including EU)	£15,300	N/A
International students registered in the School of Humanities and Social Science or in the School of Business and Law	from £13,900	N/A

PhD by Publication
Full-time	Part-time
N/A	£2,356

Contact Brighton Doctoral College

To contact the Doctoral College at the University of Brighton we request an email in the first instance. Please visit our contact the Brighton Doctoral College page.

For supervisory contact, please see individual profile pages.