The Centre for Postdigital Cultures is open to PhD research proposals for each of the Centre’s research strands particularly via the AHRC-funded Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership (M4C). This post outlines the various strands and what research each strand is looking for from its postgraduate applicants. For all CPC PGR recruitment enquires please contact Dr. Phaedra Shanbaum at phaedra.shanbaum@coventry.ac.uk.
AI and Algorithmic Cultures (AIAC)
Theme interests
We welcome research that critically questions current definitions and uses of algorithms and AI, and re-imagines and re-defines them through practice and publishing, drawing from artistic research, anthropological methods, and technical development. Research can involve technical innovation, artistic practice and/or multicultural research to explore important societal and environmental issues related to AI and algorithmic cultures, addressing for example, UKRI’s Grand Challenge on Artificial Intelligence and Data.
Specific areas of interest
We welcome expressions of interest on the following themes and projects:
- AI and ethnography
- AI and art
- Implants and the body
- Interface Studies
ArtSpaceCity (ASC)
Theme interests
The ArtSpaceCity (ASC) research group explores how art and cultural practices shape social life, focusing on how the production and reception of cultural artefacts influence new social behaviours and spatial paradigms. Our work examines how art, design, film, digital technologies, and cultural institutions contribute to building more socially just cities. The research is primarily practice-led and action-based, aiming to develop theories, ideas, and practices that support equitable and inclusive spaces. For example, our current EU MCSA-funded project, Spatial Practices in Art and Architecture for Empathetic Exchange (SPACEX), investigates the societal benefits of spatial practice projects.
For more information, visit https://www.spacex-rise.org/. To explore current Postgraduate Research (PGR) projects aligned with our supervisory team, visit ArtSpaceCity PGR Projects.
Specific areas of interest
Publicly Funded Cultural Institutions: Investigate the role of galleries, libraries, and museums in shaping the Democratic City, focusing on how these institutions contribute to public life, civic engagement, and the formation of social values.
Art, Technology, and the(digital) Public Sphere: Explore how art and cultural practices impact social dynamics, particularly through the integration of digital tools and methods that promote democratic dialogue and public opinion formation. Analyse the influence of technology on the development of Smart Cities and examine the idea of the “silly city”—a concept that prioritizes the well-being and happiness of communities, citizens, and users over efficiency.
Artists’ Innovative Strategies: Research how artists adapt to contemporary challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and reductions in public funding, developing strategies for the sustainability of their practices. This includes conducting ethnographic studies of artists’ resilience and evolving methods.
Public Art and Urban Space: Examine the role of artists in placemaking and urban regeneration, expanding the concept to include interactions with “beyond-human” actors, such as natural elements and non-human agencies, in the development of urban environments.
Art’s Role in Community Development: Investigate the transition from institutional critique to infrastructure interventions within the creation of art. Explore how artists engage with communities to influence urban infrastructure, creating projects that challenge and reimagine traditional civic structures.
Artists and the Archive: Analyse the role of artists in reinvigorating archives, reinterpreting historical collections for public engagement, and making archives accessible to wider audiences through creative practices.
Art and Activism: Study the practices of care and custodianship exercised by artists in community contexts, focusing on projects that extend to the Global South. Investigate how artistic activism fosters social change, cultivates solidarity, and addresses global inequalities.
Ludic Design
Theme interests
The Ludic Design research theme explores how playful and game-based design can be applied to address societal challenges. The theme is also interested in the impact of emerging technologies such as immersive technology and artificial intelligence. We conduct community-engaged research that investigates how these approaches and tools can create meaningful experiences that raise awareness, foster empathy, and promote social change. Our research is driven through our multi-award-winning GameChangers Initiative (https://gchangers.org).
Specific areas of interest
The Ludic Design theme is interested in exploring new and innovative research avenues that integrate play, games, immersive technology, and AI to address pressing social and cultural challenges. Key areas of focus include investigating how educational games can promote democratic engagement, civic participation, and critical thinking, as well as exploring the potential of virtual reality (VR) to authentically represent the experiences of underserved populations, fostering empathy, and understanding through immersive storytelling.
Additionally, we are keen to explore the cultural dynamics of gaming communities, examining how these environments shape social interactions, identity, and inclusivity. Another area of interest is the role of AI in creative processes, where we are eager to explore how AI tools can enhance human creativity and collaboration across various artistic and technical fields. We invite researchers to collaborate with us on these exciting projects and push the boundaries of what these technologies can achieve in advancing social change.
Postdigital Intimacies (PDI)
Theme interests
The Postdigital Intimacies theme in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures holds relationalities at its core. Whether relations with ourselves, others, or more-than-human others such as the environment, technology, and machines, we hold these to be deeply affecting and affective, and both lasting and ephemeral. We also acknowledge the ways in which intimacy is also often oriented towards risk, and seek to attend to these failures of intimacy that manifest in ruptures, tension, conditionality, betrayal, non-consent, and even violence, even when there might be radical potential in such failed intimacies. Postdigital intimacies expose both the possibilities and vulnerabilities of living relationally and in worlds where we are – digital and not, and for better and worse – irrevocably bound to one another.As such, our research and supervisory efforts centre on an exploration and responsiveness to digital vulnerabilities and equity, and particularly how post digital intimacies intersect with race, class, gender, and other protected characteristics. We work broadly in the areas Cultural Studies, Design, Media, and Gender Studies, using discourse, textual, and content analysis, social media analysis, co-production, ethnography and more.
Specific areas of interest
In Postdigital Intimacies we would be very interested in supervising projects broadly across the areas described above or more precise projects exploring wellness cultures, digital positivity and postfeminism (including aesthetic labour, feelings and emotions, therapeutic culture, self-help, cuteness, kindness, femininity and the body, qualitative and feminist methods). We are also interested in work that studies social interactions in online communities, from marginalized identities online, neurodiversity/neurodistinction, and online safety for vulnerable adults. Specific projects on “lurking” in online support groups, and friendship creation online are especially encouraged. Finally, we invite projects that look at technologically-facilitated gender-based violence, digital health design, feminine technologies, and platform intimacies, or any intersection between. We are keen to work with postgraduate researchers with interests in reproductive rights, gender and health, or privacy and surveillance in emerging health tech, particularly as these manifest and are represented in popular culture and social media.
Post-Publishing
Overview
Post-Publishing is a research theme that gathers together researchers and practitioners who, both collaboratively and individually, explore alternative pasts, presents, and futures for publishing. For us, reimagining what publishing is and what it does means performing it differently: beyond the commercial and humanist legacy systems that still dominate publishing, beyond a focus on books as objects and commodities and on binaries between print and digital, and beyond the way oppressions along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, ability, and language, continue to shape our writing and publishing practices.
Specific areas of interest
We welcome expressions of interest on the following themes and projects:
- Knowledge Equity and Diversity
- Experimental Publishing
- Collaborative, Horizontal, and Process-focused Publishing and Research
- Intersectional Feminist Publishing Practices
- Publishing Activism
- Psychosocial Dimensions of Publishing
- The Neoliberal Conditions of Academic Work
- Scholar-led Publishing
- Publishing and Climate Justice
- How to Scale Community-Led Publishing Models