Arts and Humanities Postgraduate Studies at Brighton by ArtsNews

Research and postgraduate studies at the University of Brighton

The tendency towards self-reflexivity in contemporary culture, and the blurring of the boundaries between the theorist and the practitioner, the critic and artist/designer, provides a unique opportunity for developing a culture of research... Professor Darren Newbury

Story of arts education in Brighton

For over 150 years, colourful and creative lives have been led in Brighton around its schooling in the arts and humanities. The history of the transformation of the Brighton School of Art into the current College of Arts and Humanities parallels the narratives of art and design nationally and illustrates the burgeoning of Brighton as a creative place to live and work.

We provide study resources that enable people to produce their best work; from our teaching staff to our technical teams, our library, archival information and technology experts, pastoral and support networks, and our facilities and digital environments.

Throughout this long history we have nurtured excellence in the full range of the arts, gradually becoming involved in new disciplines, new technologies playing an increasingly major part in the cultural life of the city.

Although the institution has come a long way since it was founded as an art school in rooms in the Royal Pavilion, the same drive to achieve something new, to offer rich opportunities, and to support the arts through the highest quality education, is at the heart of everything we do.

Brighton School of Art 01. c.1937. 02. c.1937. 03. c.1973. 04. c.1965. Courtesy of University of Brighton Design Archives.

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FOREWORD BY THE DEAN Brighton offers a diverse and rewarding environment for study. Our expert staff represent excellence within their own disciplines and work collaboratively, crossing traditional academic boundaries, enabling the real worth of arts and humanities to be visible in a culture of shared knowledge. When I first joined the university I realised very quickly that I had taken on much more than a new academic job in a new city; rather I had become part of an extraordinary series of intertwined histories and traditions that have shaped the creative character of many students and staff. The arts are unusually cherished and championed here. There is an unspoken and collective sense of cultural and social purpose that is rooted in a long and treasured history. Thanks to the contributions of the many staff and students in their wide range of disciplines, we continue to develop a supportive environment within which to nurture individual scholars and collaborative interdisciplinary work. This enables us to fulfil our public role in the community, to engage with the creative economy, and be participants in communities of creative practice.

Joining us as a postgraduate student makes you an important part of what we are doing here with the arts and humanities in Brighton. We promise to bring a difference to many lives through the quality of our teaching, our research and our many contributions to the community. This book shows you a few of the aspects we are proud of and which are available to everyone who takes a course with us. We look forward to welcoming you in person to the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Brighton.

Professor Anne Boddington Dean

A supportive research environment

A SUPPORTIVE SCHOLARLY ENVIRONMENT I have been the Director of the Centre for the Research and Development (Arts) at Brighton since it was established in 1998. The CRD supports high quality research across the spectrum of arts and humanities disciplines. This depends on an attentive, dedicated and friendly support team that provides administrative assistance and expertise to all our researchers, academics and postgraduates. If you have any questions about how you might go about securing research funding and about making sure your research has an impact, this is the place to come. My own background is as a practising design historian for 35 years. I was very much involved in shaping the discipline from the mid-1970s when the first specialist degree courses were established in the UK. Of my academic work, the book Twentieth Century Design (1997) is perhaps the most widely known. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m pleased to say that the inter-disciplinary nature of the arts provides an environment capable of challenging my own disciplinary perspective on a daily basis.

Professor Jonathan Woodham Director of the Centre for Research and Development

high quality research across the spectrum of arts and humanities disciplines

Find out more at arts.brighton.ac.uk/postgrad

POSTGRADUATE STUDIES Becoming an advanced student in the arts and humanities is a rewarding experience. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be facing new challenges, understanding the world at ever deeper levels and drawing on all your creative and intellectual potential. Whether your study is based around reading and analysing, making, observing, experimenting or performing, there are expert people and specialist resources at Brighton to help you. The universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s postgraduate framework is part of a progression that can take students from undergraduate work, through masters, and then either into creative professions or onto a PhD and into a career as a professional researcher.

Our masters and PhD students work with experienced academics, exploring new ideas and testing the boundaries of knowledge. Whether your studies are in a taught format or based on independent research, you will benefit from a stimulating peer group and supervisory teams that push you to achieve your best. The university can explore the possibility of funding with appropriate students, and there are a range of progress procedures in place designed to help you achieve your goals, guaranteeing regular, invaluable feedback on your work. We are used to working with students who are balancing their postgraduate degrees with other work and domestic responsibilities, so part-time study is very common. All students are encouraged to actively engage with what is a very rich interdisciplinary research culture to get the most of their masters or PhD: probably the most fulfilling academic experience any researcher can ever have.

A vibrant, creative city

A VIBRANT, CREATIVE CITY

Brighton has an ‘everything-is-possible’ creative attitude that goes back to 1823 and the completion of John Nash’s famous Royal Pavilion. In the nineteenth century, Henry Cole reckoned the city’s ‘industries’ were ‘health, recreation, education and pleasure’, and since then it has inspired the likes of Graham Greene (Brighton Rock, 1938), Franc Roddam (Quadrophenia, 1979) Julie Burchill (Sugar Rush, 2004) and currently Fat Boy Slim and Nick Cave.

Our seaside city is a great place to be a student. On the south coast near London and Gatwick airport, Brighton is bright and bustling, upbeat and unconventional, cosmopolitan and contemporary. It has an energy and buzz that students, academics and artists love and is a place where you can be yourself – or reinvent yourself. Our historic institution, originally the Brighton School of Art, has been a major part of that atmosphere since 1859. As well as the annual displays of student work and a close relationship with many of the industries in the city, we have contributed to the Brighton social scene and are a lead member in many projects on the south coast.

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The town saw one of the founding movements of cinema, the ‘Brighton School’, and we now host the major Screen Archive South East and the annual CineCity film festival. With community work that brings fashion and design to local schools, projects such as Alice Fox’s inclusive arts ‘Smudged’ at Tate Modern, and arresting student work on display in the gallery, the institution has a fruitful relationship with the city and its many cultures.

Brighton has a reputation for being a buzzing seaside destination filled with artists, designers and technologists but it’s not clear how having all these different people and skills in one place affects the creative practice which goes on. My role as researcher on the FUSE project involves exploring the relationships which exist between the city’s artistic communities and the creative, digital and information technology cluster. I work with many of Brighton’s institutions and communities to find ways that the university and the professional digital community can get the most out of their relationship. Postgraduate students have an important part to play in making sure that these connections are as creative as they can be through research that seeks to make a difference locally as well as nationally and internationally. Dr Georgina Voss Research Fellow for FUSE Project

A vibrant, creative city

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06 01â&#x20AC;&#x201C;03. Images of the annual Brighton Festival and city environs. 04. Falmer campus. 05. The South Downs. 06. Brighton seafront. 07. The Royal Pavilion.

International appeal

INTERNATIONAL APPEAL The University of Brighton offers a warm welcome to students from overseas. For those who are building towards confident academic English we offer a suite of language development programmes prior to postgraduate study.

Dr Yunah Lee South Korea Lecturer in the History of Art and Design and former PhD student Yunah Lee came from South Korea to study and subsequently joined us as a lecturer. She teaches art and design history and researches East Asian design/design history and the global and transnational context of design. “Conceptually challenging, design history at Brighton opened my mind to whole new ways of thinking about design and ‘things’ surrounding us. Teaching experience during my PhD gave me the opportunity to learn and build new skills and knowledge as a lecturer. My students include practitioners and theorists, which creates an interesting dynamic and keeps me informed of design practice as well as history and theory.”

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Dr Elisa Lega Italy Lecturer in Architecture and former visiting PhD student “Throughout my stay in Brighton I was working on my doctoral thesis, which crossed the subjects of interior design, cultural geography and sociology. “Leaving a scientific community, in my case INDACO Department, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, to temporarily join another one is always challenging, especially if the community you visit is as trans-disciplinary as the University of Brighton’s College of Arts and Humanities. Yet when starting my three month placement, rather than finding myself lost in a sea of possibilities, I arrived at a very well-organised centre, where kind and supportive people were able to give the sort of hands-on practical advice that really helped me to develop my PhD. “The university provided the ideal community to explore my chosen disciplines from both academic and practice-based perspectives. “I’d say my experience at Brighton demonstrated how supportive a fully functioning academic environment can be. It also helped me begin to articulate where the original contribution of my thesis lay. A few months later I submitted and was awarded my PhD and the support I received at Brighton played an important role in helping me achieve that goal.”

Haifa’a Bani Ismail Jordan Postgraduate student Interior Architecture “As a foreign student, English was one of my biggest fears. Then I figured out that English is the tool that would pave the way for my future career as an interior designer. I joined the pre-sessional English course at the Brighton Language Institute, so I would be able to communicate my ideas and thoughts to others in a language that the whole world would understand. “The encouraging and friendly atmosphere that I found on the pre-sessional course, provided by the excellent helpful teachers and staff, is the reason why I would recommend this course for anyone who would like to discover the true meaning of the English language. The tutors are always there for you, willingly pushing you in the right way to learn more and more.”

Teaching experience during my PhD gave me the opportunity to learn and build new skills and knowledge as a lecturer

Archive and Resources

ARCHIVES AND RESOURCES Our archives provide a key scholarly resource. Supervision by the archivesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; scholars also enables students to engage fully with material from beyond the institution. Private archives have also allowed several recent doctoral researchers to become significant scholars. The Design Archives provide an exciting resource for postgraduate students and researchers from many academic disciplines interested in the designed environment, the design profession and in getting beneath the surface of design practice. The academic staff, archivists and curatorial teams initiate and promote collaborative activity through a programme of publication and exhibition projects and offer teaching and supervisory expertise in a range of fields including design history, exhibition curation and archival studies. The internationally significant collection in the Design Archives focuses on British design and global design organisations in the twentieth century. Recent AHRC-funded doctorates located in the Design Archives include collaborations with the Chartered Society of Designers and the Design Museum in London.

The Design Archives provide an exciting resource for postgraduate students and researchers from many academic disciplines

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01. Eric Gill working on Prospero and Ariel at BBC Broadcasting House in 1931.

Screen Archive South East (SASE) holds a rich array of screen media from across the south east of England including magic lantern slides, film, video, digital media and associated hardware. What makes the archive unique is the extensive collection of amateur and family film depicting everydaylife. 01

Students have used the Screen Archive South East collection as a resource for fashion history, for example, to explore how women adopted trousers as everyday wear. The archive’s collection is also a rich creative research resource for practising artists and filmmakers. It inspires the development of new work, both at the University of Brighton and elsewhere in the UK. For example, ‘Against the Tide’, an interactive documentary film project with local filmmakers, used archive footage of the south east coast to stimulate the creation of new films and start conversations about people, history and place.

Student research work is also supported from library and information services including the specialist art and design library at St Peter’s House. Information Services also participates in many local and national access schemes to ensure researchers can make use of research libraries and specialised archives across the UK, enhancing your practice with practical help.

Dr Ruth Cribb Former PhD student Ruth published widely during her doctoral studies at the university. Having access to archive material on the sculptor Eric Gill, with whom her grandfather worked, Ruth was able to establish new thinking on early twentieth-century sculptor practices.

My project uses unpublished and largely unresearched, and significantly some previously unknown, archive material on Gill, his workshops and assistants, to analyse his day-to-day sculptural practice and his professional connections. Gill wanted to redefine sculpture following his idea of truth to materials, the method of direct carving and his own Catholic faith. His self-created persona as a solitary craftsman and art-world exile has precluded balanced accounts of his work. My study maps the complexities of sculptural processes lying behind the ideologies of modernist production. I’m interested in compiling an archival understanding of the man behind the myth.

Intimate knowledge

INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE Our lives are enriched by activities that may seem intimate, hidden and ephemeral. Dr Annebella Pollen’s research examines the secret histories of popular image culture, and she talks below about research on ‘The postcard’s language of love’, commissioned by Brighton Museum and Art Gallery for an exhibition on love and romance in the city. The confined and public space of the cheap-to-buy and cheap-to-send postcard is at first sight an unlikely location for the outpouring of desire or for sharing heartfelt self-expression. These rectangles of card, mass-produced, sometimes gaudily printed and sent by the thousand are, however, home to necessarily brief but surprisingly rich messages of love and longing, suggestion and revelation. The early twentieth-century postcards in the holdings of Brighton Museum serve a variety of functions in addition to their evidence as visual documents of local topography.

Whether acting as practical missive, holiday memento or love letter, the postcards offer multiple windows into the personal communications of the past, enabling access to first-person histories through their intimacy, informality and immediacy. Dashed off without thought for posterity, and conditioned by the physical limitations of the medium, the postcard correspondence retains an unedited freshness and liveliness that is borne of spontaneity. Fine details of lived experience add contextual richness and authenticity to the reality of relationships shaped by train times and grounded locations. The few words – sometimes no more than a sigh – become epigrammatic when isolated on the page and scrutinised from an historical distance, even haiku-like in their capacity to reveal more than the sum of their parts. The hand-written inscriptions and speech-like patterns of postcard writing make historical lives tangible, giving the reader the privilege of the eavesdropper in accessing the absent presence of the past.

Whether acting as practical missive, holiday memento or love letter, the postcards offer multiple windows into the personal communications of the past

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The enormous availability of postcards, their long-standing popularity and their functional capacity inevitably make their visual and scriptural subjects heterogeneous. From polite greetings to enquiries after mislaid scissors, from pre-printed advertising cards to holiday souvenirs, the variety of individual sources – largely unknown and unknowable – that have come together to form the disparate collection of Brighton Museum postcards mean that a variety of messages, images, purposes and meanings coexist. While local geography provides the link that connects the material, the postcards I selected from the inscribed minority of the holdings represent only one angle that might be excavated. In pursuit of evidence of love, sex, attraction and courting in the museum’s collections, I looked at thousands of postcards with a one-track mind. Like a voyeur, I sought out any mention, explicit or covert, of desire. The private world of the postcard’s message is protected from inquisitive eyes by the frequent use of abbreviations, acronyms and encryption. Rather than being evidence of the paucity of literary skills or sophisticated feelings in their senders, however, such devices acted as a means of maintaining secrecy. Using an envelope would have doubled the price of postage in the days when a postcard was a mere halfpenny to send. If a sender wanted to deter the unwanted attention of anyone from prying postmen to parents, strategies had to be performed.

These devices range from the very common and seemingly naïve method of writing the message upside down in relation to the address, through to code, mirror writing and literal concealment. One of my favourite of the Edwardian postcards that attempts to hide its message follows this latter model. On a black and white image of Madeira Drive, the message declares: “I have got some news for you but as I don’t want anyone else to read it I will try and put it under the stamp. Yours truly, Burton.” Sadly, whoever tore off the stamp to reveal the secret took it with them; only torn paper remains behind. Each of these suggestive messages provides direct-address narratives of everyday lived experience, saying so little and yet so much. These are historical cameos; first lines of unwritten novels. The romantic postcards I located in my research act as witnesses, recording and evidencing feelings shared or hoped for, whether scribbled in mauve indelible pencil or the more fugitive lead, or elegantly composed in often misspelled but beautifully inked copperplate. They act as wishes, testimonials and material manifestations of loving exchange, and their intimate and sometimes concealed nature creates a palpable sense of historical proximity.

Dr Annebella Pollen Researcher and lecturer in the History of Art and Design

Creative Spaces

CREATIVE SPACES Provision for the arts and humanities includes a gallery and theatre in the heart of the city of Brighton. Providing an exhibition space for practice work in the arts, design and photography for masters and doctoral students, the space has also housed important curations fed by the research of scholars and students.

Our MA graduate shows draw the public into the gallery each summer, providing graduates with curating and exhibition experience alongside a test for their works in a central public site, whilst the Sallis Benney Theatre enables the hosting of major conferences as well as performances of all kinds of arts and music. Our venue hosts elements of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual arts showcase, the Brighton Festival, as well as regular specialist festivals in cinema and photography. Works by internationally acclaimed designers and artists past and present have been exhibited here, including that of our own Turner Prize winners Keith Tyson and Rachel Whiteread and fashion designer Julien Macdonald OBE. Academically-focused exhibitions have allowed new insights into major practitionersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work. Recently the gallery has hosted exhibitions of the work of graphic designer MacDonald Gill, internationally acclaimed Czech designer Jiri Pelcl and sound artist Peter Vogel, each curated by arts-based academic experts.

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LEARNING SPACES Space concerns everyone within education, from real space to virtual space, the future of library support and a vision of how space to share and develop ideas can help our students and our academics profit from the university environment. Brighton has placed itself at the centre of discussions on learning space, facilitating initial explorations through its five-year project, the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design, which then led to a Reshaping Learning conference and publication of Towards Creative Learning Spaces (Boys, Boddington eds. 2012). The work at Brighton starts with a concern that contemporary debate in this field assumes the need for a shift from formal to informal learning spaces, without really analysing what is (or should be) changing in learning and teaching practices. Introducing the problem in her essay Beyond the Beanbag? Towards New Ways of Thinking About Learning Spaces, Jos Boys articulates something that is fundamental to the way we tackle ideas in higher education. “I call these myths,” she says, “not because they are ‘wrong’ but because they have become a commonsense we think with rather than about, and thus can all too easily substitute for critical analysis.”

Our commitment to the ideas behind use of space and the function of architecture extends through many projects with direct impact on our environment here. Our sustainable architecture research has led to the eco-architecture build ‘Brighton Waste House’, reinvesting in projects that received national television coverage, while our postgraduate students in architecture have worked with urban agriculture, social housing plans and experimental panoramic imaging.

Design Archive

04 01. A researcher looking at display designs by Natasha Kroll for Peter Jones department store, 1939, from the Natasha Kroll Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives. 02. With the Bentley in France and Switzerland (1939); production Joseph Emberton. Screen Archive South East.

05 03. Brownie camera by Kodak Ltd, 1960. Design Council / University of Brighton Design Archives 04. British Railways seating, 1955. Design by Robin Day. Design Council / University of Brighton Design Archives

05. Robot image created for Robots and Space Toys exhibition, 2005. Designed by Chris McEwan and Paul Clark.

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06. Record player pick-up arm by SME Ltd, 1962.Design Council / University of Brighton Design Archives. 07. Council of Industrial Design exhibition poster, 1959. Design Council / University of Brighton Design Archives. 08. Poster design, Tom Eckersley, 1961. Design Council / University of Brighton Design Archives.

Cultural collaborations

CULTURAL COLLABORATIONS Catherine Speight AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awarded PhD student “Funding allows you to work collaboratively with an organisation in order to address a research question from ‘within’. I’m working largely with the V&A, London’s internationally celebrated museum of art and design, to develop creative and innovative learning opportunities for practice-based design students through its network of universitymuseum partnerships.

Our international reputation for the study of design history and material culture includes a thriving relationship with museums and heritage sites. Masters and research degrees feed from scholarly work that includes curation, museum pedagogy and artists’ curatorial intervention.

“My project builds upon the work of Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design (CETLD), a partnership between the University of Brighton, V&A, Royal College of Art (RCA) and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). This researched the relationship between museums and higher education (HE) and examined the opportunities that collectionsbased learning offered practice-based design students. By undertaking a critical examination of the V&A and its role in supporting HE, my study aims to address the conceptual and physical barriers that impede effective integration between the two sectors and how new and effective connections can be made. “I have supervisors at both Brighton and the V&A and we meet to discuss the project as a group about once every six weeks. I hope that my PhD will contribute to the research agenda on museum-university relationships, but that it will also make a real difference to policy in this area so that a student’s experience of design education can be as positive as possible.”

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Professor Guy Julier University of Brighton Professor of Contemporary Design at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London “In developing a programme of research, events and exhibitions that link the museum and the university to the contemporary creative industries, a number of challenges emerge. How, for instance, might the museum engage with new processes and applications of design? How would Facebook or Twitter be curated? What about design for health or wellbeing? How would the museum represent an innovatory transport system that combines digital networks and products? These are the kinds of questions that are central to my work.

“With a background in design history, over the years I have been increasingly involved in what is sometimes termed ‘design activism’. This is concerned with design that foregrounds environmental issues, political interests or social change, rather than competitive, commercial advantage. The pressures of climate change, migration, resource scarcity, economic shifts, to name but a few, are producing new ways by which design is used and practised. Add this to technological advances and we can begin to talk about an ‘expanded field’ of design that is much more than chairs, typefaces or iconic buildings. An increasing amount of design is about the orchestrations of systems, relationships and interactions rather than the fashioning of individual objects. “With University of Brighton and V&A colleagues, I am developing curatorial and research practices that engage with these issues. I run a Design Culture Research Group and have developed an on-going series of talks by experts on social design that feeds into government policy research.”

01. Ballgowns from the fashion collection. Victoria & Albert Museum, London. 02. Ceramics Gallery. Victoria & Albert Museum, London. 03. Collection-based learning. Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Museum Intervention

MUSEUM INTERVENTION

Con all Gleeson’s collaborative project Sounding Out the Museum with fellow University of Brighton arts researchers Amy Cunningham, Mikhail Karikis, and Jean Martin, was a curatorial intervention at the Musée des Beaux Arts, Nîmes, France. New works were performed in the Musée in the context of the Tête-à-Tête exhibition curated by Peter Seddon.

Gleeson’s performance of Invisible Targets responded to notions of civil conflict, democracy and monarchy embodied in Cromwell’s Sorrow by Jean Martin, placing in situ the music of seventeenth-century English composer, Henry Purcell, and an imagined soundscape of battle cries and social unrest that pervaded the streets of London during the English Civil War. Written for loudspeaker and two snare drums, it featured a rhythmic fragment of the command to ‘retreat’, which would have been played on a snare drum in the Seventeenth century battlefield. The sounds of twentieth-century modes of military communication such as Morse code and radio, were introduced and included the muffled voice of Prince Harry talking about his experiences in Afghanistan, drawing a direct line between the political climate of today and that of the Prince’s distant ancestor Charles I.

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01. Mikhail Karikis at Musee des Beaux Arts, Nîmes. 02. Conall Gleeson, Drums at Musee des Beaux Arts Nîmes. 03. Jacob Epstein’s The Archangel Lucifer adorned with carnations as part of Matt Smith’s Queering the Museum exhibition in 2010.

Curator and artist Matt Smith’s PhD explores the ability of queer culture and theory to be communicated through craft objects and exhibitions.

Museums and galleries have traditionally shied away from the emerging discipline of queer theory. More fluid than lesbian or gay, queer can be used to describe anything non-normative. Using Polari – a secret language historically used by the gay community – as a metaphor, Smith builds a visual bibliography of “queer work”, identifying shared characteristics, aesthetics and themes and considering whether characteristics can be mapped or if the works are solely united by their stance of being opposed to the norm.

Research communities

RESEARCH COMMUNITIES Each researcher and innovative practitioner aims to share their innovations and advances with colleagues and the wider world. To help with this, our staff and postgraduate students can enjoy the support of our various centres and groups. These help with funding, provide access to supportive academics within the discipline and allow dialogues to develop among like-minded colleagues. These subject ‘research initiatives’ host a range of seminars and bring fascinating guests both as invited speakers and as resident research fellows.

They also offer a platform for disseminating our own staff and students’ best work and provide opportunities for our postgraduate students that extend beyond the university, enabling direct connections to key professionals in academia, cultural industries and in the broader professional world. Regular seminar series welcome students from all disciplines to broaden their knowledge, connections and interests. Popular seminars are held across the full range of arts and humanities disciplines. We have filmmakers, artists, philosophers and writers as well as university academics from all over the world as guests.

01. Laura Murphy, MA Performance and Visual Practices. 02. Dr Katy Shaw. 03. C21Journal.

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Centre21: the Centre for Twenty-first Century Writings, facilitates investigations into a range of textual and storytelling practices from fiction and poetry to digital gaming and graphic novels. Led by Dr Katy Shaw, Centre21 is affiliated with Bloomsbury Publishing and supported by a number of professional writing and educational organisations. It has undertaken consultancy work for institutions including The British Council and the NHS, bringing an understanding of the role and function of writing and communications practices to new global audiences. Centre21 is home to international, peerreviewed journal ‘C21 Literature’, while academic work in contemporary writing informs our MA degrees in both Literature and Creative Writing. Dr Shaw understands why students engage enthusiastically with contemporary literature: “There have been so many exciting recent developments in contemporary writings, both in terms of content and form. The role of the writer and particularly of fiction has been the subject of much debate in a post9/11 world.

“Alongside experiments in digital writings, creative writings and genres, the publishing industry has also changed, with technological advances giving rise to the dawn of the eBook and corporate sponsorship igniting debates about the usefulness of literary prizes and festivals. “For example, Nick Cave, honorary doctor of the university and Brighton resident, released The Death of Bunny Monroe as an e-book to include social networking links, an audio of author readings and lyrics that sit alongside the traditional text. Popular experiments like this change the way we engage with, as well as consume fiction, and the digital is genuinely altering the way we tell our stories today”.

What do we know?

WHAT DO WE KNOW? Scholarly communities profit increasingly from the breadth of practice undertaken, as well as the depth that comes through individual specialism. A modern university strives not only to sharpen its cutting edge in the recognised disciplines, but also to encourage the pursuit of new knowledge types, whether these evolve from trans-disciplinary practices, or a fostering of those ‘ways of knowing’ that stand outside traditional scholarship. Studying the arts and humanities allows us to articulate and enhance our collective understanding of the ways in which we see the world. We do this by bringing together all aspects of intellectual, emotional and experiential knowledge, through a rich diversity of method and practice.

It is accepted that designers, for example, will need a range of skills in their developing careers and the programmes that have been developed under ‘Design Futures’ include education in areas of writing, digital coding, sound art and interior architecture as well as design in graphics, computer interfaces, 3D products and textiles. Across the arts and humanities we find projects that expand the knowledge base through creative collaboration: photographers join with critical historians, artists display their work as part of political philosophy conferences, furniture designers join with storytellers, while filmmakers and archivists work with fashion designers. The result goes beyond a shared interface. These ventures highlight the formation of knowledge and how new ways of thinking emerge.

A modern university strives not only to sharpen its cutting edge in the recognised disciplines, but also to recognise the pursuit of new knowledge types Trans-disciplinary evolution is one key to the effectiveness of this diverse practice, with clear opportunities for staff and students either to collaborate or to draw on their own cross-disciplinary background.

The emphasis shifts from ‘what we know’ to ‘how we know’ as we take account not only of digital connectivity and resources but also the increasing importance of tacit knowledge, allowing the development of ideas ‘beyond words’. The famous example of trying to write up the ‘how to’ for riding a bike, gives a simple illustration of a knowledge type that transcends the written.

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Brighton has contributed significantly to the establishing of art, design and media as tools in the development and dissemination of knowledge. Students at all levels are encouraged to develop critical enquiries through their practice, often in the pursuit of research questions that are unanswerable by other means. The systematic, rigorous and critical practice of an artist, architect, dancer, storyteller or designer can thus result in scholarly insight that would otherwise remain invisible. Successful investigations through practice have included: questioning the knowledge systems provided by museums; investigating the feasibility of user engagement through psychologically aware design; evaluating the pedagogic mechanisms involved in lifedrawing with medical students; discovering the political resonances in contested space; or testing the narrative potential of reclaimed objects. Community projects contribute equally to the important issue of what knowledge is and what the university does to nurture and expand it. As digital technologies bring mass participation to the fore, we are able to consider how ideas are formed and communicated though new means. Projects such as ‘Community21’, an online networking tool developed in collaboration with the university, or the digital economy research of Professor Gillian Youngs, allow us to examine a type of knowledge which challenges that traditionally formed around top-down expertise and looks instead to

co-production and curation; a composite community knowledge. Other projects have examined how multi-participatory artworks are generated, how mobile and social media devices can reinvigorate the hive-mind, and how the voices of far-flung communities can engage new audiences. The university community is one of multiple practices, whether these are in the analysis of written material and the writing of new texts, or in forms which are themselves evolving as scholarly tools – painting, dancing, fabric design, storytelling – or in forms based on evolving technologies – digital platforms, generative code, smart textiles, gaming cultures. As we accept that learning happens everywhere and anywhere, and that contributions to the shared knowledge base can come from diverse sources, so we can invigorate the creative community, in turn generating a scholarly environment that is self-critical, able to reconsider and reshape itself, one which welcomes the new practices of the next generation of students and staff.

Brighton has contributed significantly to the establishing of art, design and media as tools in the development and dissemination of knowledge Dr Michael Wilson Academic Communications Manager

Finnish Glass

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01. Ornamental glass designed by Tapio Wirkkala. Design Council/ University of Brighton Design Archives. 02. The Fish, decorative glass, 1937. Designed by Gunnel Nyman. Made by Riihim채ki Glass Factory. Owned by the Museum of Art and Industry in Helsinki. Design Council/University of Brighton Design Archives. 03. Glass designed by Tapio Wirkkala of Finland. Design Council/University of Brighton Design Archives. 04. Glass designed by Tapio Wirkkala of Finland. Design Council/University of Brighton Design Archives. 05. Glass bowl designed by Gunnel Nyman, Finland. Design Council/University of Brighton Design Archives.

Sustainable futures

SUSTAINABLE FUTURES Professor Jonathan Chapman Researcher and Professor in Sustainable Design Since 2009, Professor Chapman (Course Leader of our Sustainable Design MA), has been engaged in consultancy with Puma – the world’s biggest sports lifestyle brand. Recognising the university’s strong reputation for research and teaching in sustainable design, they devised and launched the ‘Puma Sustainable Design Challenge’; a creative competition run exclusively with students across all subject areas and at all levels at the University of Brighton. At the competition launch, Puma’s Global Director of Strategic Innovation, Louis Joseph, said: “The University of Brighton is an incredibly energising place. It is a place of ideas and this is what Puma is all about – changing the way we do business through the lens of sustainability”. The competition involved students exploring sustainable solutions for the company and the winning student received a one year paid internship in one of Puma’s global design centres, and the opportunity to get their career off to a flying start.

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My research contributes the to broad concept of Urban Agriculture (UA), the need to grow food and resources in cities to be used by cities. It engages with and is sympathetic to the argument that growing food locally, close to cities is necessary for ecological, economic, and social sustainability. The research explores one aspect of this concept, community food gardens investigating six examples on housing estates in London. I chose to study at the University of Brighton based on the quality of supervisory staff for the PhD, specifically Andre Viljoen who is an acknowledged expert in the area of UA. The university quickly saw the need for my research to engage with the social element of gardening and human geography and teamed me up with Professor Andrew Church who has published on the connection between gardening and the everyday. My research is therefore cross-disciplinary and the university has been sympathetic and nuanced in creating the right academic environment for me to study. Mikey Tomkins PhD student in Architecture and Urban Studies

02 01. Food crops at Plaistow, London. 02. Raised beds at St Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, Estate, London.

Emotionally Durable Design

EMOTIONALLY DURABLE DESIGN Professor Jonathan Chapman’s work considers how designers can create products that users won’t want to part with so readily Perhaps due to the normalcy of innovation, material culture is increasingly expendable, even sacrificial. In this oversaturated world of people and things, durable attachments with objects are rare. Most products deliver a predictable diatribe of information, which quickly transforms wonder into drudgery; serial disappointments are delivered through a product’s simple failure to maintain currency with the evolving values and needs of their user.

Landfill sites are overloaded with fully functioning products; hoovers that still suck and freezers that still chill; all of which still perform their tasks perfectly in a utilitarian sense. In a more emotive sense however, waste of this nature could be seen as nothing more than a symptom of a failed relationship between the subject and the object. As is so often witnessed in human pair-bonding relations, when adoration fades the original bond weakens, fresh bonding urges are motivated and the original partner is rendered obsolete. It becomes clear that durability is just as much about emotion, love and attachment, as it is fractured polymers or blown circuitry.

The volume of waste produced by this cyclic pattern of short-term desire and disappointment is a major problem, not just in terms of space and where to put it, but for its toxic corruption of the biosphere.

The common phenomenon of individual evolution and the out-growing of a static product by its constantly changing user, has intensely destructive implications for the sustainability of consumerism.

durability is just as much about emotion, love and attachment, as it is fractured polymers or blown circuitry.

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In the developed world, consumer desires relentlessly grow and flex, while material possessions remain hopelessly frozen in time. This incapacity for mutual evolution renders most products incapable of sustaining a durable relationship with users. So why do we scorn the fake walnut veneered TV-set in a ditch, or the rejected avocado bathroom suite? Is it triumph perhaps? Affirmation of our transcendence beyond those aesthetic faux pas that we as consumers have fought so hard to assemble?

In the developed world, consumer desires relentlessly grow and flex, while material possessions remain hopelessly frozen in time.

Resources – as we like to call matter for which we have a commercial use – are being transformed at a speed far beyond the natural self-renewing rate of the biosphere. Consequently, reserves of useful matter are running low and many will soon have vanished. Doggedly pursuing the dream of a technologically enhanced and physically durable world has enabled us to fabricate a plateau of material immunity. Durable metals, polymers and composite materials grossly outlive our desire for the products into which they are fashioned, and so the illusion of control bares its first predicament: waste.

Einstein once stated that a problem could not be solved from within the mindset that created it. Indeed, fresh thinking is imperative if we are to successfully transcend current working methods and stride forth into unprecedented commercial territories. New work in sustainable design thinking proposes a radical design about face in order to reduce the impact of modern consumption without compromising commercial or creative edge – empowering alternative modes of consumption through provocative genres of objects that expand our experience of daily life, rather than closing it down through endless cycles of desire and disappointment.

Yet, even in this anonymous world of mass-produced homogeny, a fortunate few succeed in transcending their assembly line cousins. A sun-yellowed portable TV, for example, bears its evidence of UV decay.

This sign of life, narrative and use elevate such items to an untouchable plateau – from products to things, and from things to personal effects.

Adapted from the writings of Professor Jonathan Chapman, including Emotionally Durable Design (Earthscan, 2005) and subsequent articles.

Student-led research groups

STUDENT-LED RESEARCH GROUPS

Societies for students to share their scholarship have emerged in the critical studies disciplines. Founded and run by masters and PhD students, the groups provide a distinct academic contribution that fuses with the activities of the staff researchers. “The Critical Studies Research Group (CSRG) emerged from the informal debates and discussions that our postgraduate research community was having in Humanities. We formalised the group in 2011. It now provides a forum for students to discuss critical ideas in light of the socio-political challenges of the day. Our weekly seminars allow students to present their work in what is a really exciting and constructive environment. Our core focus is the role and scope of critical thought under contemporary capitalism and we’ve been well supported to explore themes related to this question through workshops and a seminar series.

“Through these and the annual conference we organise, we play an active part in inviting external speakers to the institution. For example John Holloway, a leading theorist of autonomism, visited for a seminar and this allowed us to engage with the political ideas surrounding the ‘Occupy’ phenomenon of the time. Our first conference Capitalism in Crisis: Political Alternatives featured lectures by three worldclass theorists and was the culmination of a year-long course entitled Critical Theorists on Capitalism, the Financial Crisis and Political Responses between 2008–2010. “We are MA and PhD students, committed to interdisciplinarity, with research interests that range from continental philosophy and re-conceptualisations of materialism, via environmental and medical ethics, to memory studies and cultural history. The CSRG provides a provocative forum that not only challenges people’s assumptions, but also allows us to share our postgraduate experiences in a non-judgmental atmosphere.”

Birgit Hofstaetter PhD student in Philosophy

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The society exists to support research and scholarship through regular meetings, social events and a lively online forum for the exchange of information, opportunities and experience.

With Brighton’s reputation as an international centre of excellence in design history, it was natural that a postgraduate society would emerge from the interests of what had become a group of keen and high-performing scholars. Established in 2005, the Postgraduate Design History Society (PDHS) is a peerto-peer support network for students and emerging scholars with interests in a range of topics associated with the increasingly broad area of design history, from museums and material culture methodology to theories of dress and the decorative arts. Our annual symposia have brought scholars from inside and outside the university to consider debates on design history and material culture, showcasing the health and breadth of its members’ work and offering great opportunities for students who are new to public academic events.

Our sessions have delved into ideas of Materialising Ethnicity and Archives of the Everyday, Acknowledging Gender and Consuming Novelty, providing space to connect with peers and colleagues from across the design history community. Individual papers from our own college have included: • Annebella Pollen – Purchasing Power: Rationality, Thrift and Protest in the Shopping Practices of Older Women; • Bridget Millmore – Love the Giver & Keep This For His Sake: love tokens produced by convicts transported during the eighteenth century; • Gavin Fry – A Bold Experiment: Making things the Messel way – a hand embroidered intervention at Nymans house and gardens; • Verity Clarkson – It was all done with smiles: Exhibiting Cold War Retellings of Anglo-Russian History; • Cheryl Roberts – Disrespectful Foreign Innovations: Trouser Tensions in the Interwar Years.

Making a difference

MAKING A DIFFERENCE Our academic community fosters an environment where contemporary debate on key issues promotes meaningful change through an understanding of our shared humanity. With the English language at the heart of global academic and popular cultures, our work across linguistics and in the use of language influences a range of issues. How do we construct meaning? How does contemporary media make use of linguistic and paralinguistic behaviours? How do we use modal verbs and confront the hypothetical? How do we teach new language?

Linguistics at Brighton has a particular focus on exploration of the semantics-pragmatics interface from different perspectives. Dr Tim Whartonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, for example, builds bridges between linguistics and more technological disciplines such as digital sound processing. In language studies Dr Catherine Watts, Consortium Director of the national Routes into Languages initiative, conducts research to address the decline of modern language learning in Britain. Our interests include poetics, stylistics, creative writing, philosophy of language and language learning pedagogies. Our students benefit from regular seminars and visiting speakers. Masters courses in English language teaching include specialisms in media-assisted learning while Creative Writing allows students to develop interests across narrative theory, pedagogy and expression for well-being.

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Our well-established academic community nurtures new thinkers and new thoughts. Cross-disciplinary work in the humanities has recently resulted in a major research group development at Brighton, bringing staff and students together in order to examine issues of violent conflict and its legacies. Addressing questions in the light of the lived realities of those who inhabit postwar or post-conflict cultures and societies, the group interrogates the complex interrelations between ethical and political justifications of violence. It examines how the past is represented and memorialised when trying to build peace and reconciliation. The ethos of cross-disciplinary practice at Brighton informs a range of debates around cultural studies, philosophy and politics, with research work that includes race and identity, globalisation, ethics and the issue of torture.

Our well-established academic community nurtures new thinkers and new thoughts, tackling issues in specialist research centres and student-led critical study groups. Students develop a sophisticated and nuanced appreciation of key academic debates that they can draw on for their own specialist work. Our community enjoys visits from international academics at both fortnightly seminar series and annual conferences. Recent topics that drew on a range of academic interests were: Why Charity? The Politics and Ethics of Charity (2014), Riot, Revolt, Revolution (2012) and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;9/11 Decadeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Rethinking Reality (2011).

Understanding the 20th century

UNDERSTANDING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

History at Brighton focuses on modern issues and perspectives. Academic strengths in cultural and social history make us a key voice in debates on, for example, identity, memory and the nature of history making. Our historians have hosted international conferences, bringing scholars to events including The Second World War: British Popular Memory and Popular Culture (2011) and The Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain: Impacts, Engagements, Legacies and Memories (2012). There is also an annual postgraduate conference, again with visiting scholars.

Conference themes that brought together the wide interests of the postgraduate community have included: The Emotions in History, Memory and Storytelling, which examined the development of new methodologies and of nuanced approaches to source material and to articulation of emotion; and Public Lives, Private Lives, which brought scholars together for multidisciplinary discussions as to the changing boundaries between the public and private. In 2012 Brighton was proud to host the annual Social History Society Conference, the largest annual history conference in the UK. Research is fostered by the Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories, which holds regular research seminars with visiting scholars and offers a framework of cooperative expertise for researchers and postgraduate students.

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Dr Andrew Hammond Researcher and lecturer in Literature, Humanities Dr Hammond’s research has focused primarily on British fiction and travel writing, addressing such issues as exile, decadence, identity, imperialism and cross-cultural representation. His early research was concerned with British and American discourse on southeast Europe from the early nineteenth century to the present day, analysing the forms of power this discourse has supported. His publications on the subject include Through Another Europe: An Anthology of Travel Writing on the Balkans and The Debated Lands: British and American Representations of the Balkans. In recent years Dr Hammond has begun a research project on British literature and the Cold War. His concern is the manner in which the political, military and ideological conflicts of the 1945–1989 period were explored in literary fiction, including the work of Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess, Muriel Spark, JG Ballard, Ian McEwan, Doris Lessing and Alan Sillitoe. His major publication on the topic is Cold War Literature: Writing the Global Conflict.

Dr Lucy Noakes Researcher and lecturer in Social History, Humanities Dr Noakes’ research as a social and cultural historian focuses on the inter-related areas of war, memory, gender and national identity; areas that inform both her research and her teaching. She has examined the ways in which we remember the past, both at an individual level and as established history, in particular, looking at the uses that the memory and history of the Second World War have been put to in contemporary Britain. Dr Noakes is also an expert on the work of British women in the armed forces in the twentieth-century and has published widely in this area. Her 1998 monograph War and the British: Gender and National Identity, 1939–1991 continues to be cited in much current research into the social and cultural history of Second World War Britain.

New histories

NEW HISTORIES The university has been a forerunner in the development of many aspects of design history. Professor Lou Taylor played a pivotal role in what she terms the ‘establishment’ of dress history, and her life’s work was celebrated with the 2011 conference Developments in Dress History which attracted delegates from across Europe and the rest of the world.

Professor Taylor has been a passionate advocate of valuing dress as an object and of the use of garments as historical evidence. She furthered curatorial methods of analysis of dress as well as providing a critique of the practices, its collection and its exhibition in museums. In particular, her teaching and research have been devoted to the relationships between dress and gender, class and fashion and the patterns of colonial trade.

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Many of Professor Taylor’s former students are now eminent curators or lecturers in their own right, including Professor David Crowley at the Royal College of Art and Professor Amy de la Haye at the London College of Fashion. Students continue to flourish in the academic environment Professor Taylor created, enjoying specialist courses at undergraduate through to doctoral level. Together with her colleagues and research students, Professor Taylor set up the Research Collective for Dress, Textiles History and Fashion Studies. The collective aims to enable, enhance and publicise collective research and debate in the fields of dress and textile history and fashion studies, and includes an online resource for access to significant dress collections in the south east of England.

03 01. Professor Lou Taylor. 02. Fashion history images from the the programme’s teaching collection. 03. Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation dress on display at Harrod’s department store, Knightsbridge.

Dr Jane Hattrick Lecturer in Design History and former PhD student Dress historian Dr Jane Hattrick’s PhD investigation tracked the relationship between the public and the private in the design work of Britain’s most prominent couturier Norman Hartnell, from his position as cutting-edge, 1920s fashion designer to royal dressmaker, the post-war peak of his career and the business’s decline during the 1960s-70s. She examined the design, production and retail of Hartnell couture, staff hierarchy and shifts in the consumption of couture within the context of cultural and social change in Britain, and the implications of the diffusion of his royal style worldwide. Through her discovery in 2005 of patterns, motifs and embroidery in Hartnell’s archive, Hattrick helped recreate the Queen’s coronation dress for a Diamond Jubilee window display at Harrod’s department store in 2012.

Fashion History

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01. Fan, c.1900. 02. Victorian hoop petticoat. 03. Au Printemps store catalogue. Winter, 1924â&#x20AC;&#x201C;5. 04. Waistcoat for wedding, c.1835. 05. Peggy Page nylon day dress, 1957. 06. Marks & Spencer polyester blouse, c.1966. 07. Hyams Tailorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s catalogue, 1853.

Design for wellbeing

DESIGN FOR WELLBEING Dr Joan Farrer Reader in Design and Materials

A cross-disciplinary researcher and design leader, Dr Farrer fosters new collaborations for interdisciplinary teams and applied research using design thinking or design practice. She works in smart textiles, taking on the challenges of the modern world by developing interactive practices and projects between professionals across textile design and biochemistry. Her aim for the future of design research is to ensure the up-skilling of design practitioners and to engender a new type of postgraduate researcher. Dr Farrer’s background is industry and retailing and her consultancy work has included advising UNESCO and Marks & Spencer on ethical and sustainable production. She was inspired to pursue her academic studies whilst on a business trip to the Far East as a retail consultant, where she began to question the ethics behind high street fashion retailing. She saw young female workers were producing luxury silk knitwear for a major UK retailer in appalling conditions. This led her to undertake PhD research analysing the fashion textile global supply chain, exposing the true economic, social and environmental cost embodied in the production of one wool fibre. In her most recent work, Dr Farrer has been interested in the potential application and impact of smart materials. Applications of flax fibre are currently being researched as a sustainable material in a myriad of applications which include regenerative medicine, wound dressings, as a food source for a healthy diet, bio-degradable

packaging, flax furniture, architectural cladding and the development of innovative forms of yarn and clothing. Within the Design Research Initiatives programme at Brighton, Dr Farrer has worked with a number of external partners in the UK and overseas and has led a range of successful high-level funding bids. A recently completed project aims to educate and develop, in the UK and France, green entrepreneurs who understand the use of sustainable materials, textiles and wood. Elsewhere funding is enabling a diverse range of developments such as ‘smart gels’ in wound dressings, smart technical textiles for post-operative ostomy procedures, melanoma prevention due to sun overexposure and earthquake tremor warning systems using conductive nano-fibre polymers.

01. Dr Joan Farrer. 02. Tom Ainsworth’s exercise device for Rheumatoid Arthritis patients.

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Dr Tom Ainsworth Former PhD student in Design and Craft

“I first studied Design and Craft as an undergraduate here at the University of Brighton and then went on to an AHRC funded doctorate. My research was interdisciplinary, combining design and medicine, and examined ways in which design could be used to improve engagement with healthcare advice amongst people with rhematoid arthritis. My supervision was split between staff from Arts and from the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, who supported me and gave me access to all the equipment and resources I needed to complete my doctorate. “My experiences at the university have been quite unique, and I have had some great opportunities here. In between degrees I worked with the university’s medical school as a research assistant and was then involved in the award-winning ‘Creative Campus Initiative’, which supported art and design projects relating to the London games of 2012. I was involved in three projects through the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design that, in turn, led to the establishment of ongoing interdisciplinary research, teaching and learning alongside colleagues in medicine, 3D design and materials disciplines. I am now a researcher and lecturer within the university working on a range of design and health initiatives. “The University of Brighton has been a really supportive and encouraging environment, and has opened more doors for me than I ever expected.”

Opportunities abound for involvement in wide-ranging cross-disciplinary projects

Learning through innovation

LEARNING THROUGH INNOVATION

The ways in which new technologies are changing our understanding of the world are key to many creative practices. Digital arts and cross-platform / multi-media narratives are included in postgraduate courses and research work, where they can either be centre stage as a specialist discipline or a supportive element in other practices.

Sue Gollifer Course Leader for the MA in Digital Media Arts Artist and curator Sue Gollifer is Director of International Society for the Electronic Arts. Her primary research is on the impact of new technology within the practice of fine art. A pioneer of early computer art, she has continuously explored the relationship between technology and the arts and has written extensively on this subject. Her studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; recent work includes collaborating with the company Invisible Flock on the Brighton Festival co-commission Sea of Voices. This was undertaken in response to The Lone Twin Boat Project, a living archive of peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stories and lives; a 30ft seafaring vessel made from donated wooden items, itself part of Artists Taking the Lead, a series of 12 public artworks commissioned in response to London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

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01. Sue Gollifer. 02. Sound recordings for multi-platform Auditoryum project.

Dr Sarah Atkinson Researcher and lecturer in Media Dr Atkinsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research work examines narrative, text, process, apparatus and audience to map the new spaces and modes of spectatorship. Her book Beyond the Screen: Emerging Cinema and Engaging Audiences presents an expanded conceptualisation of cinema which encompasses the myriad ways film can be experienced in a digitally networked society where the auditorium is now just one location amongst many in which audiences can encounter and engage with films. The book includes considerations of mobile, web, social media and live cinema through numerous examples and case studies of recent and near-future developments. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The widespread adoption of technologies such as mobile devices, for digital media consumption and social networking, has led to the emergence of hybrid and pioneering forms of fictions, where stories are experienced across a multitude of platforms across long periods of time. This is having a profound impact upon production processes and aesthetics. The boundary between reality and fiction blurs, cinematic and televisual genres merge and the audience is able to participate within the fictional world as never before.â&#x20AC;?

Evolving Digital Communities

EVOLVING DIGITAL COMMUNITIES Gillian Youngs, Professor of Digital Economy, has been undertaking research on the Internet and its diverse impacts since 1997. Digital innovation is a key theme in this work, which has included experimental online community television production for geographically specific communities. Recent examples in Monmouthshire have shown the potential of digital hyper-local media, seen widely now as one of the new areas for digital economy expansion and innovation. This activity harnesses the power of ‘the local’ and people’s identification with it, as well as the interactive and horizontal possibilities of the Internet and associated technologies such as mobile devices. One of the interesting aspects of such developments is that physical place is fundamental to their modelling, a long way from simplistic framings of virtual transformations as predominantly ‘placeless’ in their power and identity. This is extended into projects which include QR code interactivity built into townscapes, allowing geo-tagging of information and also facilitating virtual tours around the town enhanced by use of augmented reality software.

The QR code projects are characterised by offline/online dynamics and in true Wiki fashion have community co-creation and curation at their experimental centre with its local/global dimensions featuring varied kinds of engagements with ‘locals’ and ‘visitors’ including via virtual connections. The latter can be viewed as part of the path towards the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT). IoT is generally understood to represent the next major stage of the Internet, where the informational power of the online environment becomes embedded in the concrete world around us. It renders our environments more intelligent and responsive by ‘sensing’ data as well as making it accessible to us. This research as a whole demonstrates that we have much to discover about what innovation is in digital times: who the innovators are and where and how innovation takes place. Innovation in the context of these projects has substantial grassroots, both community and social, as well as informational and creative components. The projects have strong place-based identities as well as the capacity to harness the full global, as well as local and mobile, reach of the Internet and its bottom-up and horizontal communication potential. The projects also demonstrate different forms of both local and global cocreating community collaboration.

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we have much to discover about what innovation is in digital times: who the innovators are and where and how innovation takes place Professor Youngs notes that too many peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspectives on innovation, in particular in policy circles, are based on the old industrial paradigm of innovation, a pre-Internet model relying predominantly on large-scale investment and technology as things. However, in digital times, innovation is about ideas, people and different forms of connectivity through information, multimedia and co-creation, as much as it is about things. It is about new ways of linking ideas, people and things, to generate new business models and services, and more responsive and effective ways of organising cities and environments, homes and work.

Anyone who has a great idea can be part of the innovation culture in the digital economy and innovation can happen in the non-profit sector as much as it can in the traditional market place. Professor Youngsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work with innovative community-based projects shows how the horizontal potential of the Internet and its multimedia power can bring people, communities and their interests together to help build a digital economy with complex local, inclusive and creative dynamics. The digital economy does not follow the old industrial boundaries separating the market and other sectors; on the contrary, it is highly disruptive of those boundaries.

While innovation will continue to be driven through traditional routes, in a digital scenario it is something that can be generated at grassroots level by an individual at home, in the schoolroom, on the kitchen table, in a discussion in the pub. Multimedia digital technology has mass availability where there is connectivity, and greater penetration of high-speed broadband and expanded content and availability will boost the possibilities for innovation even further.

Now we need a lot more work to infuse policy approaches with such disruptive sensibilities so that the number of routes to innovation can be expanded. This needs to happen, even beyond the current spotlight on small and medium-sized as well as micro-enterprises, to include and engage all forms of social and cultural digital innovation. Adapted from an article by Professor Gillian Youngs in Research News Edition 30, Winter 2012/13.

Evolving new academic practices

EVOLVING NEW ACADEMIC PRACTICES Brighton has been a key venue for the development of Screendance as an accepted artistic discipline. Screendance is an art form that purposefully combines movement on screen with camera movement and movement created in the editing process, and while its current status is relatively new, it is as old as cinema itself, having been in development since the early twentieth century by artists from the fields of dance and the moving image. Known also as video dance, film dance or dance for camera, this art form now has international practitioners, but Brighton retains a vital role in its development. Current artists draw on different histories and use technologies in their work. Their subject matter reflects on a society that is increasingly image-based through screens on smart phones, laptops and through advertising. This rapid development of screen technologies and global media means we will probably see more diverse work emerging and Brighton is keen to remain at the centre of the practice. Brighton’s Professor Liz Aggiss and Claudia Kappenberg are leaders in their field, having both helped to redefine the discipline.

Along with filmmaker Billie Cowie, Professor Liz Aggiss has been a key figure in the development of the art form. A performer, choreographer and filmmaker, her practice encompasses live performance and interdisciplinary performance practices. Her work is described as “eclectic, borrowing from a range of styles and is inherently cross-genre, unclassifiable, dodging categorisation… blurring the boundaries between high art and popular culture.” Fostering the development of this new form, Claudia Kappenberg founded the Arts and Humanities Research Council Screendance Network, focussing on the staging of events and exhibitions whilst aiming to examine the interrelationships of composition, choreographic language and meanings of body, movement, space and time. Screendance is the ideal vehicle for an exploration of contemporary cultural debates surrounding mobility, spatial politics and artistic agency, as well as overarching pertinent themes that include sustainability and social and community engagement. The university is justifiably proud of the creative force evidenced in the growth of a discipline like Screendance, part of a fine art performance culture which offers opportunities to postgraduate students seeking to explore artistic issues through their performance work across music, dance, theatre and film.

01. Professor Liz Aggiss, still from Motion Control, published in Anarchic Dance, 2006.

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Janina Moninska PhD student in live performance art “One of the things I like about the department is that it encourages interdisciplinary research. I guess my research is a good example of that as I’m exploring what it means to be a refugee through live performance art. “My interest in the topic comes from being the daughter of a post-World War Two refugee. My aim is to use Live Art as a means, not understanding what being a refugee means intellectually in a national or global context, but to engage in its meaning viscerally and psychically through the actual experience of refugees and their neighbours. One of the challenges I’ve had is defining what ‘refugee’ means in the first place. But having supervisors from both a humanities and a performance background has helped me get to grips with some of these complexities and look at them from different angles. “The practice element of the research will examine how live art, with its capacity to be situated in the moment, might have the potential to create a sense of belonging to a shared community of inclusive refuge, to forge new relationships with the refugee and refugee law and be effective as a form of political intervention. Can live art provide alternatives to the hegemonic and media dominance of the refugee situation today? Doing a PhD is of course a big challenge, but I’ve found a group of like-minded researchers to hang around with. This makes it so much more manageable and my PhD will undoubtedly benefit from the interdisciplinary supervision and support that Brighton provides.”

Influencing Cultural Trends

INFLUENCING CULTURAL TRENDS Our postgraduates in graphic design and illustration study with tutors whose work is cutting-edge and globally influential. From iconic album covers to celebrated graphic novels and illustrated children’s books, the experiments and interests of our staff have helped forge modern visual culture. Students have left our masters and research courses for careers as authors and illustrators, continuing the great tradition of investigative imagination and a search for excellence.

Professor George Hardie Professor of Graphic Design

Graham Rawle Artist, novelist and researcher

Professor George Hardie’s career spans early iconic album covers such as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon through to national stamp collections, and contemporary collections of images that solve visual problems through careful observation and crafting of graphic solutions.

Graham Rawle’s innovative Lost Consonants for The Guardian demonstrate his playful crossassociation with word and image that have recently gone into the experimental novels Woman’s World and The Card.

the experiments and interests of our staff have helped forge modern visual culture.

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FINE ART: THE TURNER PRIZE At the core of our international reputation in the arts is its attraction of and nurture of artist researchers and experimental practitioners.

Paul Burgess Course leader for Illustration Paul Burgess is the author of the book Satellite: Sex Pistols Graphic Design and Memorabilia and has contributed regularly to various music and design publications. He is an adviser to Sotheby’s on the subject of ‘Punk Graphics and Clothing’ and has written numerous articles on the subject in the music press.

The department’s postgraduate and research culture fosters critically aware investigations across sculpture, painting and printmaking, theoretical work and curatorial practice. This is reflected in our teaching and fuels the atmosphere of innovation, experiment and discovery that lies at the heart of our students’ widespread success. Successful student projects include the exploration of the relationship between the content, the critical production and reception of art in a range of environments, challenging the agency of the artist and the curator and the potential role of art in regenerating public spaces and enhancing social inclusion.

Former students Rachel Whiteread and Keith Tyson have won the internationally established Turner Prize. Keith Tyson, commented for our 150th anniversary celebrations that he “found a truly exceptional and open educational system … my ongoing relationship with the university is testament to its influence during my founding years.”

01. Keith Tyson, ‘The God of Origami’ studio wall drawing August 2006. 1570 x 1260 mm. Mixed media on watercolour paper, 2007.

Graphic design/fine art

01 01. Fang Yu, Turn the World Inside-Out. MA Sequential Design and Illustration. 02. Barbara Taylor, from Beds 2002â&#x20AC;&#x201C;9. MA Photography. 03. Chloe Lelliot, Halcion Lounge. MA Photography. 04. Lesley White, from The House Rabbit. MA Sequential Design and Illustration.

05. Emma Falconer, Odysseus and the Argonauts. MA Sequential Design and Illustration. 06. Anna-Kaisa Jormanainen, Happiness â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Sample analysis MA Sequential Design and Illustration.

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The postgraduate student experience

THE POSTGRADUATE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

I guess you could say doing a PhD can sometimes feel like pushing a boulder up a hill. But my supervisors and the students that share the experience have helped me to chip away at the debris that has crossed my path along the way!

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That sounds like a big topic. How have you focussed it down?

01–02. Sketches for Paradigm of Sisyphus by Louisa Buck.

Louisa Buck PhD student in Sequential Design and Illustration As a practice-led researcher you’re able to bring something to research that probes tacit knowledge. What is the basis of your project? It involves a critical investigation of the uses and meaning of Greek mythology in the work of British political cartoons.

How is your practice involved in your research?

I’m interested in modes of interpretation and perception: design decisions and authorial intent that create narratives from the basic stories, that can make the use of Greek mythology so adaptable in explaining modern phenomena. I’m exploring this through my own drawing.

I’m using a case study of the Myth of Sisyphus, which has been well-used in British political cartoons. Sisyphus can be seen to represent futile exertion and the recipient of a great burden. So many factors determine the extent of the futility and the weight of the burden. The age, race, class, gender, weight and mood of Sisyphus all affect the meaning of the image and contribute to alternative connotations of the myth.

What is the broader relevance of the myth and how has Brighton helped you get up the hill you’re climbing?

I’m exploring the construction of meaning through political cartoons. But I guess it’s my own drawing that makes pushing the boulder up the hill possible… Without the practice element the burden would just be hypothetical. Brighton provides an environment within which I can balance these intellectual and practice-led elements. I guess you could say doing a PhD can sometimes feel like pushing a boulder up a hill. But my supervisors and the students that share the experience have helped me to chip away at the debris that has crossed my path along the way!

The postgraduate student experience

01. Peter Bennett, Going Away #4 02. Peter Bennett, Going Away #1

Peter Bennett MPhil student in Photography My practice-based MPhil provisionally titled ‘Proximity and Absence: Photography and the Aesthetics of Memory’ explores in greater depth the ideas stemming from my MA, also at Brighton. My MA really helped me get to the point where I felt able to develop a more comprehensive project. Photography provides both an important material record of perception and a metaphorical model by which to imagine the possible structures of perception and memory.

Using Marcel Proust’s literary conception of memory as a primary foundation, with its emphasis on optical and photographic technologies, I am currently photographing the deteriorating pages of old books in order to refer to the processes of fading, disintegration and forgetting. Brighton provides an ideal environment in which I can explore the relationship between my theoretical contribution and that of my practice. As a part-time student I am also given the space here at Brighton to develop my work alongside my other life as a lecturer in a local college.

Find out more at arts.brighton.ac.uk/postgrad

Ethics and Inclusivity

ETHICS AND INCLUSIVITY Professor Bob Brecher Professor of Moral Philosophy Research ethics provide methods for ensuring that researchers act responsibly, respect participants, avoid endangering them unnecessarily and build a methodologically sound structure. If your methods are not ethically sound it can potentially undermine the validity of your research. As Professor of Moral Philosophy, Bob Brecher has played a key role establishing the platforms upon which ethically sound practices can endure in teaching, learning, artistic practice and arts research. He has founded an MA in Applied Ethics, an integrated MRes module in Ethics, and has developed and led the department’s Committee on Ethics and Governance.

Research ethics are really important to what we do here. They encompass everything that makes a research project legal, safe and moral. “We believe that ethics should be considered and applied to any number of disciplines. In recent years, fields such as media and politics have shown an increasing need for more rigorous and ethical practices. Postgraduate students in the arts and humanities have the opportunity to consider and apply ethics in relation to their own projects and research interests, doing so in a considered way that doesn’t undermine their original intent.”

01. Professor Bob Brecher 02. Dr Alice Fox with Louella of Rocket Artists.

Find out more at arts.brighton.ac.uk/postgrad

Alice Fox Lecturer and researcher in inclusive arts practice Alice Fox is a leader in the development of collaborative/participatory arts practice with vulnerable people. Her research in the field includes the project ‘Overalls’, which offers new and creative ways of engaging in reflective practice and proposes a shift in how students gather, reflect upon and reveal their thoughts around learning. The award-winning ‘a2a’ Access to Art project in Brighton, forms part of Alice Fox’s ongoing work. Here, artists with learning disabilities work alongside undergraduate art students from the university and the project has established a pioneering model for inclusive learning and a unique platform for research into teaching. From this experience Alice Fox developed the University of Brighton’s Inclusive Arts Practice MA, which equips students with the necessary skills to initiate and manage truly inclusive participatory arts projects with diverse and marginalised groups. At Tate Modern in 2011 her project ‘Smudged’ brought together the visual art practice of the Rocket Artists and performance skills of the Corali dancers, 2013 saw the international Side by Side, Learning Disability, Art and Collaboration Southbank exhibition, directed by Alice with the Rocket Artists.

Her work has had a huge impact on the way marginalised groups, together with staff and students of the university, can work alongside each other to make art in a vibrant and inclusive environment.

University building locations

Find out more at arts.brighton.ac.uk/postgrad

01. Quad garden at Grand Parade, Brighton 02. Pavilion Parade, Brighton 03. Graduate Show architecture pavilion, 2013 04. The Checkland Building, Brighton 05. Interior Dorset Place, Brighton 06. Interior of Grand Parade building, Brighton

Leading Academics

LEADING ACADEMICS Our professors provide academic leadership as established authorities in their fields. Six recently-appointed professors spoke about the role in relation to their research discipline and postgraduate teaching.

Jeremy Aynsley Professor of Art and Design History “PhD students are the lifeblood for developing a future-orientated research culture. They invariably introduce new thinking ‘outside the box’ which is methodologically adventurous and refreshes an academic field, taking it in new directions. Studying for a PhD is one of the most rewarding and intense experiences that academic life offers – but keep the research to scale. It is too tempting to make it a life-work.”

Cheryl Buckley Professor of Fashion and Design History

Francis Hodgson Professor in the Culture of Photography

“Research is at the core of my life and it is key to being a professor, but fortunately I have always enjoyed teaching. I think back to the numerous students that I have taught at all levels and I realise how vital their questions were for my thinking. Being a professor carries with it a tremendous responsibility to lead by example in all aspects of professional, academic life.”

“In photography was invented what has become the dominant manner of thought of our age, the experience of something without any accompanying analysis. We experience the world today in ways that were developed in photography. The form is central to our shared intellectual experience, and there are great synergies to be gained from promoting it.”

Find out more at arts.brighton.ac.uk/postgrad

Peter Lloyd Professor of Design

Darren Newbury Professor of Photographic History

Paul Sermon Professor of Visual Communication

“Being a professor means a recognition that you have certain qualities of leadership in your chosen field and that you are able to reflect, communicate, and construct the academic values of the institution. A professor is also someone who has the experience to recognise quality and the ability to make connections at many levels: between disciplines, people, theory, practice, education and research.”

“As Director of Postgraduate Studies I believe that research and peer review, or peer recognition, are central to academic work. The award of a professorial title is about more than simply expertise; it carries with it a responsibility for the leadership of research in a subject both institutionally, and in the wider academic world.”

“I strongly believe in teaching art and design at all levels through creative experiences. I often directly involve my students in both the conceptual development and public exhibition of practice-led research projects. Students need to get to know their research community so they can ask the right questions and make their contribution count.”

What we do

WHAT WE DO 3D Design, Sustainable Design, Materials and Craft Architecture, Interior Architecture and Urban Studies English Language Teacher Education Fashion and Textile Design Fine Art Graphic Design, Illustration and Visual Communication History of Art, Design and Dress Humanities: History, Philosophy, Culture and Politics Language and Linguistics Literature Media, Film and Broadcasting Performance and Sound Art Photography

Production team

With thanks to:

Alison Crowe Mark Toynbee Michael Wilson

Tom Ainsworth Anne Asha Sarah Atkinson Haifaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;a Bani Ismail Peter Bennett Anne Boddington Louisa Buck Jonathan Chapman Marley Cole

Isobel Creed Ruth Cribb Joan Farrer Birgit Hoffstaetter Sara Humphrey Guy Julier Claudia Kappenberg Sirpa Kutilainen Yunah Lee

Beth Leese Elisa Lega Philippa Lyon Steve Miles Janina Moninska Catherine Moriarty Lucy Noakes Annebella Pollen Katy Shaw

Catherine Speight Barbara Taylor Mikey Tomkins Andre Viljoen Georgina Voss Lesley Whitworth Jonathan Woodham John Wrighton

Find out more at arts.brighton.ac.uk/postgrad

@artsbrighton

Thanks to the contributions of the many staff and students in their wide range of disciplines, we continue to develop here a supportive environment within which to nurture individual scholars and collaborative interdisciplinary work. Professor Anne Boddington

College of Arts and Humanities University of Brighton Grand Parade Brighton BN2 0JY