Dear Colleagues
I'd like to draw your attention to the below fully-funded Art and Design PhDs available at the Belfast School of Art, Ulster University for 2022/23. Details regarding contacts can be found via the links.
A long-list of 14 fully-funded projects is available via
https://www.ulster.ac.uk/doctoralcollege/find-a-phd?query=&subject=Art%20and%20Design:%20History,%20Practice%20and%20Theory
The closing date for all is 22nd Feb 2022.
Best wishes,
Dr Brian Dixon SFHEA
Interim Research Director Art and Design (UoA32)
Course Director MA UX and Service Design
AHSS ECR Distinguished Research Fellow
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Designing Sustainable Futures: the design of practical solutions for application in industry, commerce, and society
Summary
A key objective for our future is to radically change the way we think and behave. Governments have set in place challenging zero emissions targets with COP26 galvanising international climate change priorities. Further, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, as a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all, has re-contextualised how manufacturing, commerce, education, and civic society reflect on their actions and devise strategies towards a less wasteful future. Our commitment to the UNSDG agenda is evidenced via our research in Art, Design, Architecture, Engineering, and more widely across the university.
This project focuses on developing sustainability design solutions and offers the successful candidate the opportunity to develop new approaches to existing sustainability problems which can include policy-driven solutions, new technology or knowledge transfer schemes, new information sets in any area across art, architecture, design, or engineering. We are particularly interested in receiving applications from individuals who can demonstrate an interest in the change agenda from local and international perspective, linking original research at Ulster with global challenges and partnership building.
Applicants should be able to propose and undertake research initiating new ways of working whether in sustainable creative practice, recycling, policy document review and design, or innovative design solutions that can bring real benefits to society. Good design can change behaviours and a user-centred approach to problem-solving we believe will ultimately provide for a more sustainable future.
This is a cross-disciplinary design project with the opportunity to benefit from relevant co-supervision in a related discipline in other parts of the University. The successful candidate will take a key role in developing cutting-edge research in the design discipline with access to the latest international research through the library’s extensive academic resources and networks and through our collaborations with relevant industries. This is an internationally relevant project and links with other institutions and research centres will be supported and encouraged. Day to day research will involve the generation and testing of new ideas, the introduction of new models, and testing of new prototypes within any one of the broad spectrum of disciplines in art, design, and engineering in their broadest sense.
The successful applicant will have access to desk space, full access to many world-wide academic research databases, an annual stipend and access to supplementary support funds as well as ongoing supervision support and further training through Ulster’s Doctoral College. It is an exciting opportunity to be at the forefront of a research area that is fast becoming a key strategic global priority.
Details can be found at: https://www.ulster.ac.uk/doctoralcollege/find-a-phd/1045127
Typography as Identity: the role of typography and lettering in society and culture
Summary
The explosion of graphic visual identity over the past century has seen new typographic applications and experiments, cross-disciplinary application onto textiles, engineered machines, streetscapes and signage, magazines, websites, mobile technologies, artefacts, and places being as much defined by their typographic elements as their purpose. The lettering of invention and re-invention exist in graphic statements in a more transitory way than other aspects of the designed environment and in many ways reflects more accurately the passage of time and is therefore linked to notions of taste, style, contemporariness, lifestyles.
There exists a rich typographic heritage across a broad array of applications and those typo/graphic interfaces create emotion, direct wayfinding, provide instruction, tell stories, and trigger cultures. Graphic design and typography have multiple facets and reflect multiple identities from the American Declaration of Independence to contemporary magazines and corporate branding set in the immediacy of global information and data transfers through the mobile technologies connecting cultures worldwide.
A particular focus of this project is the role and application of typefaces and lettering in society and culture – using visual and text-based academic research in order to develop a deeper understanding of typographic identity. This is an exciting opportunity to combine historical research and contemporary analysis alongside studio-based typographic experimentation. This PhD project is designed to draw out issues of identity, diversity, visual culture, graphic design, and design process as they relate to societies.
The successful candidate will take a key role in developing cutting-edge research in the graphic design/typography disciplines with access to the latest international research through the library’s extensive academic resources and networks and through our collaborations with relevant industries. This is an internationally relevant project and links with other institutions and research centres will be supported and encouraged. We are looking for applicants who are keen to develop experimental typographic interventions in researching the contribution of typography to the spirit of the place.
This is particularly relevant to applicants interested in experimental typography, placemaking and wayfinding, visual culture of place, and those interested in the changing relationship between environments and typefaces. Day to day research will involve the generation and testing of new ideas which may involve the practices and technologies of other disciplines which may include fine and applied arts, craft, graphic design, media, film, photography and technology in their broadest sense.
The successful applicant will have access to desk space, full access to many world-wide academic research databases, an annual stipend and access to supplementary support funds as well as ongoing supervision support and further training through Ulster’s Doctoral College. It is an exciting opportunity to be at the forefront of a research area at the cutting-edge of design cultures.
Details at: https://www.ulster.ac.uk/doctoralcollege/find-a-phd/1045137
Reimaging, remaking and the curation/collecting of the fine art print
Summary
This PhD research project focuses on the largely undocumented but rare and culturally and historically important print collection amassed by Richard Robinson, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh (1765-1794) and 1st Baron Rokeby. Known as the ‘Rokeby Collection’, it comprises 4,430 prints spanning the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. It is held at Armagh Robinson Library, Northern Ireland’s oldest public library, which was founded by Archbishop Robinson in 1771 to make his collection of books and fine art publicly accessible. The collection represents the best of the medium across early modern Europe. It has many strengths, including French portraiture of the seventeenth century, British and Irish landscape engravings of the eighteenth century and reproductive printmaking, making available the best of the continental collections of painting and sculpture for the citizens of Ireland.
The PhD project will investigate how and why the Rokeby Collection was put together, the techniques and technologies employed by the artists and craftspeople represented, and the significance of the collection and its subject matter within and beyond the island of Ireland. In this context, it will situate it within the history of eighteenth-century collecting. Robinson moved within artistic and literary circles across the British Isles.
The collection’s themes also indicate a deep interest in classical architecture. Taken as a whole, the collection offers an insight into the fashion and tastes of the late eighteenth century and the connoisseurship of the individual who brought them together. Printmaking was at its height during this period, being the main source of an easily reproducible visual image prior to the advent of photography from the 1820s onwards. It will also be possible, therefore, through the collection, for the PhD researcher to trace the various techniques and processes involved in printmaking and place them within their social, historical, art historical and technological contexts.
The project will involve investigative and comparative research, utilising the material and visual evidence that the prints provide. This will be compared with the connoisseurship of contemporaries (e.g. the work of Alistair Laing, Arthur MacGregor and Toby Barnard on Archbishop Cobbe of Dublin) and insights gleaned from practically recreating the techniques used to produce the prints. Together the PhD researcher’s thesis and accompanying practical outputs will help raise the profile of one of the country’s most significant, but currently under-utilised, artistic treasures. In the process, they will have the opportunity to develop curatorial skills, gain experience of cataloguing and interpretation, alongside insights into collections care, and the opportunity to create new work.
The University has a comprehensive research training suite of modules and courses, some mandatory, and others tailored to the specific requirements of each discipline - and in that regard the researcher will be well-supported in that they can access cross-disciplinary training support. They also have full access to the excellent printmaking studio and related facilities on the Belfast campus. The project will be undertaken across two main sites (Belfast and Armagh) and the student will be required to visit other significant (and related) collections, e.g. in London and Oxford.
Details at: https://www.ulster.ac.uk/doctoralcollege/find-a-phd/1045141
Designing 'Design for Policy' in Northern Ireland
Summary
Design for policy is a rapidly expanding area of practice within the wider field of design. Designers operating in this context work to draw links between traditional policy-making processes on the one hand and the creative strategies of co-design and design thinking on the other. In the UK, design for policy initiatives are currently being explored by both central and devolved governments (e.g., Westminster’s Policy Lab), with dedicated research programmes emerging to investigate current opportunities arising within the sector (e.g., Cardiff Metropolitan University). While some compelling case studies have emerged from across this body of work, some important lines of inquiry have yet to be explored in depth. Key among these is the issue of best practice. For example, at present, there is no consensus as to who should be involved in design for policy projects and how they be invited to participate (e.g., via soliciting the input of particular communities or via random population sampling from among given groups)?
Equally, there is the question of whether or not those who participate in design for policy work should be able to contribute to the early framing of policy proposals or, alternatively, whether they should merely be invited to support efforts to help realise the final form of already-determined proposals (e.g., fixing the homelessness crisis via targeted supports). This research project will explore such concerns in a Northern Irish context in particular (though there is an expectation that research will also be conducted in other areas of the UK and possibly beyond as appropriate).
The project will involve two key phases. In the first phase, the researcher will undertake a review of existing positions/initiatives in the design for policy and general policy-making arenas. It is expected that this will involve both a literature review and, alongside this, the identification of important stakeholders and institutions involved in design for policy and general policy-making initiatives, where appropriate. It is expected that a programme of interviews and/or consultation will be conducted with key individuals/representatives in the latter grouping. The aim here will be to define existing understandings of best practice and note opportunities for development and progression. In the second phase, with this overview to hand, attention will turn to the Northern Irish context in particular. Here, the researcher will be expected to again identify key stakeholders and institutions and interview and consult with key individuals/representatives.
By noting the similarities and differences of this context (as compared with the prior overview), the aim will be to identify opportunities for shaping a Northern-Irish-specific design for policy proposal, focusing in particular how it might be implemented. It is envisaged that the outcomes will be twofold, involving: (1) A survey of the existing design for policy landscape within the UK, with a focus on the Northern Irish context in particular identifying key stakeholders and potential partner institutions; (2) A suite of recommendations for how an appropriate design for policy proposal might best be framed for a Northern Irish context, with a potential pathway to implementation.
Details can be found at: https://www.ulster.ac.uk/doctoralcollege/find-a-phd/1045086
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