Art and creative practices PhD

My supervisory interests lie in the development of new approaches to Graphic Design pedagogy. I have expertise in typography, printing, editorial design and graphic systems and conventions. I'm especially interested in the emergence of new approaches to the landscape of contemporary Graphic Design practice and how the role of the Graphic Design has shifted towards a bricoleur approach to contempory communication. Graphic Design is a pervasive subject that is integrated in our daily lives, but arguably the subject of little critical enquiry. An emerging research community and unified research clustering is beginning to address this shortfall, and Doctorate Level study will help to further this body of knowledge.

I am interested in supervising on enquries into:

• Graphic Design practice, both as an act of creation but also as a force for change;

• The changing topography of the Graphic Design landscape, and the changes to the 'role' of the graphic Designer as a contemporary communicator and creator;

• Shifts in typographic practice and relationships of Graphic Design to the broader influences of social and economic factors including globalisation and homogenisation;

• The role of communication as an emerging research practice;

• Self regulation and ‘rule’ or convention generation with in the industry;

• The role of ‘play’ and ‘failure’ in design Graphic Design practice, and in particular how these actions are navigated and understood by learners and educators;

• The emergence of alternative, less formal approaches to education and the role of the ‘Art School’ in this developing landscape.

My work investigates the role of entrepreneurship in the development of creative careers as a business owner and researcher. This has included investigating the gap between education and employment for creative practitioners as well as exploring models of learning to support entrepreneurial development.

Current and recent PhD students:

Claire Dawson - An exploration for clothing reuse in the circular economy (2023 -  present)

Martin Irorere -  Sustainability in making material innovation in textiles, for the circular model in the fashion industry (2021 - 2023) 

Erika Wong – Art World Hegemony and Access: Competing Perspectives on the Value of The Creative Class (2016 – 2020) Brighton University

Veerapong Klangpremjit – Interactive Packaging Development (2014 – 2020) University for the Creative Arts

Akapan Thienthaworn – Design Management in UK and Thai SMEs (2011 – 2019) University for the Creative Arts (completed)

My supervisory interests include fine art, video, multi-media installation, sound, voice, performance, site-specific art and cultural histories of technology.

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' 

Doctoral student supervision and examination

Meaningfully Engaged? Exploring the particpatory arts practices of adults with profound and multiplul learning disabilities (PMLD)  PhD Thesis by Melaneia Warwick completed in 2018

External examiner, Royal Holloway, Janyne Lloyd, PhD thesis title The Role of Reminiscence Arts in the Lives of Care Home Residents Living with Dementia 2016

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.

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.

In addition to fine art practice, I'm interested in consciousness studies, philosophy of mind, ontology and religious stuies such as Buddhist philosophy. My own PhD covered continental thought, such as phenomenology, poststructuralism, Derrida and Deleuze, but also philosophy of science.

I am interested in supervising PhD and MRes students in the following areas: feminist photographic practices and theories, queer methodologies, queer photographic practices and theories, queer activism and representation, new materialism, posthumanism, photography and ontology, non-dialectical contemporary philosophy, process-led photographic research. 

Helen supervises PhD and MD students with an interest in arts-based interventions in healthcare, education and wellbeing, and/or the use of creative, arts-based research methods.  She is interested in talking to doctoral applicants who are interested in researching creativity and the arts, with foci including: art therapy; arts interventions for health and wellbeing, including invisible chronic and contested conditions; social prescribing; creativity and the lived experience of dementia; arts education; spoken word and poetry slam; art worlds/communities; arts inclusivity; everyday creativity; and the artistic process.   She is also interested in supervising students who wish to work with creative, arts-based and/or participatory methods, including: poetic inquiry; autoethnography; photo voice; photo elicitation; collaborative poetics; and participatory action research.  Helen currently supervises four doctoral candidates, who are researching: the lived experiences of women with borderline personality disorder (including creative coping strategies); neurologic music therapy with young people with juvenile dementia; black people's experiences of intimacy and psychosis; and decolonial praxis in museum learning.  She has previously supervised and examined work covering topics that include: perceptions of frailty in the undergraduate medical curriculum; the impact of austerity policies on homeless people; spoken word with young offenders in a Macedonian prison; the performance and perception of authenticity in contemporary UK spoken word poetry; and NHS staff experiences of work. 

Dr Uschi Klein is interested in supervising PhDs in the broad areas of photographic histories and practices, visual and material culture, resistance politics, cultural memory and marginalised communities. She is especially but not exclusively interested in supervising research projects that focus on the lived experience of Eastern European totalitarian systems.

Jayne is interested supervising practice-based PhD research into collaborative or participatory arts practices with marginalised groups, arts in health and social care settings, arts-research and arts practices located in both gallery and community settings.

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 Gavin Fry and Duncan Bullen;

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;

Duncan Bullen (PhD by Publication).

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 5 PhD students to completion: 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.

Dr McEnnis is interested in postgraduate supervision in journalism and media studies. He is particularly keen on projects that explore professional and citizen journalism, digital and social media practice, blogging and influencer culture, media analysis, sports journalism or sports media. 

My supervisory interests cover the emerging areas of Illustration as an expanded field of practice including GIFs, animation, and the burgeoning self-publishing scene, through to traditional forms of graphic storytelling. I am interested in enquiries into situated illustration, both in terms of site specific work and ethnographic approaches, to how illustrators can use technology to go beyond the printed page. The importance of drawing as means of enquiry is another interest alongside performative aspects of live transcriptions and the use of workshops to engage with communities.

One of my key passions is working with PhD students on creative practice, autoethnography and creative writing pedagogy. I have supported doctoral students working on transdisciplinary projects and work that seeks to challenge conventional academic discourse. At the moment, I am honoured to be working with students who are looking at queering the colonial, creativity and Bronte, Santiago de Cuba as moving archive, diverse narratives from Brexit, feminist romance, autoethnographic arts-based work, stories from care, autoethno-drag, identity and hybridity in fiction, and queer bodies in performance.

Xavier Ribas is interested in developing postgraduate research in the following areas: contested sites and histories, legacies of colonialism, border territories, geographies of extraction, environmentalism, climate justice, art and activism. 

Contemporary art 

Contemporary art and feminist perspectives

The history of vision

The Art School; art education; art theory.

My research and supervisory interests cover Fine Art, Digital Media, Performance and Visual Communications related subjects. Since joining the University of Brighton in 2013 I have taken on six PhD students as their lead supervisor, with completions in May 2016, March 2018 and April 2019. These 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 Postgraduate Research Coordinator in the School of Art 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 six PhD completions as lead supervisor to date, as well as two external completions and I continue to gain PhD Viva experience, with over thirteen PhD external examiner appointments.