Professor David Durling
I thought I had sent this email (below) in reply to your PhD list posting,
but I now cannot find evidence that I did. I am re-sending; apologies if
this is the second version you receive!
Sally Hollis-McLeod
Good morning, David
I notice on the PhD discussion list your 'PhD studentships in design for
sustainable desires'.
I am a visual communications lecturer but am currently mostly working on
projects other than teaching, including a research journal.
My areas of research have been visual rhetoric and social concern design,
and I have an interest in psychology and neuroscience in relation to these.
Forming a proposition for this has been difficult of late as I previously
developed a critical framework for analysis but am now more inclined to use
some of those ideas in a different, more practically useful way. I am very
interested in what I term the Śnew storiesą we will have to tell in society,
and in establishing visual/rhetorical frameworks‹and proofs‹for these, by
looking at visual messages that don't induce anxiety but do induce belief in
our ability to make, and indeed envision, positive change.
I believe there is much to be found in softer narratives and in
entertainment and media (augmented reality, e.g.), and what the flow-through
of these into visual communications might yield. The evaluation of such,
when examined against other, known, aspects of VC and behavioural change,
would provide a great study.
I have been around design a long time‹I am 60‹and have seen how little depth
we develop in our visual communication training and how few opportunities we
take up for it connecting with the sciences which could benefit it
(psychology, e.g.). Well, that is in New Zealand: I am a New Zealander (with
British grandparents).
I have been in discussion about beginning my PhD here but have little
traction given the specialised interest I have. The one person receptive to
it is not so interested in its relation to VC design, but in its
philosophical basis. In light of this I have been thinking about pathos (my
earlier research concentrated on rhetorical figuration and tropes, rather
than pathos, etc), and mental ecology. These are very interesting as
underpinnings but take me further from my urgent desire to focus on making a
difference, practically. I am trying to marry the two before I write a
proposal.
When I see the initiatives the British (BAID and Loughborough) are forming I
become very excited that there is somewhere in the world where the
connections I wish to make are seen as important.
The question is, would I in any way fit into your Śstudentships in design
for sustainable desiresą scheme of things?
Sally Hollis-McLeod
|