The City of ÃÛèÖÉçÇø and Hove gives our PhD students access to one of the UK’s most lively media economies. We foster research that takes advantage of these relationships with a history of community-engagement and industry-based research projects.
You will be based with the academics of specialist Centres of Research and Enterprise Excellence and/or Research and Enterprise Groups. These give both supervisory opportunities and the chance to network with both theorists and practitioners.
Our researchers explore how digital media impacts upon everyday life, such as its contribution to future cities through intelligent/sustainable services such as transport and social care, and ubiquitous surveillance. We also pay attention to emerging technologies and social change, exploring social media and activism, science and technology, digital health, digital citizenship, policy, governance and education, as well as the arts and the creative industries. Our focus is on matters of exclusion, inclusion, identity formation, specifically through the analytical lenses of ageing, class, disability, gender and sexuality.
The role of digital culture and digital media in political, social and environmental activism, and in the creation of online/offline communities are also a focus of our research. The nature of audiences and their engagements with digital media are explored through podcasting, news, and feminist- and inclusion-oriented approaches to gaming cultures. Researchers at the ÃÛèÖÉçÇø use a range of methodologies and theoretical approaches in their research but we pay close attention to qualitative research, ethnography and everyday life, audience research, informed by feminist, LGBT and queer theory, and contemporary theoretical debates in digital media and data technologies.
Creative media practice is another focus of research in the School of Art and Media. This includes both theoretical and practice-based research around Digital Transformation Design, Digital and Interactive Arts/Music/Sound, Photography, Immersive Media (AR/VR), Creative Industries, and many more. As a PhD student, you can draw on staff expertise in both critical creative media practice and theoretical perspectives.
PhD students could pursue research in a wide range of media and communication topics. The following areas of digital and media culture research indicate some of our areas of research expertise.
- Blockchain, cloud computing, the sharing economy
- Cultural informatics
- Data technologies and digital culture
- Digital humanities
- Digital media and activism
- Game studies
- Immersive media/AR/VR
- Innovation and media/Creative industries
- Interactive and digital arts/music/sound
- Screen cultures
- Selfies and identity
- Smart mobility and intelligent Transport
- Social media
- Sound and music practices
For more detail about these research areas please check the following links and also the supervisors' profiles below: