AHRC PhD Studentship: Digital Design for Creative Consultation

Applications are invited to apply for a fully-funded PhD studentship based in ImaginationLancaster, a leading design research centre at Lancaster University. The PhD project will explore the role that web technologies can play in creative consultation, prototyping new ideas and seeing them put to use in an established network of communities across the UK.


The Opportunity
Applicants will explore how web technologies can facilitate new collaborative or consultation processes in communities and the public sector. This is a key element of a 3 year AHRC funded project titled “Leapfrog: Transforming Public Service Consultation by Design”. Led by Dr. Leon Cruickshank at Lancaster University, this is a collaborative project between Lancaster University and the Glasgow School of Art.

Overall Leapfrog will use co-design to develop new creative consultation tools, techniques and approaches. This will involve close collaboration with community groups, public sector bodies and citizens to develop and test these new ways of engaging with public services. Over the course of their PhD project, successful applicants will explore the role web technologies can play in both consultation processes directly and the distribution and exchange of consultation tools developed by others. This will involve working with communities in Lancaster and the wider Lancashire region as well as (to a lesser extent) communities in the Highlands of Scotland. The results of this activity will be shared across the UK for wider evaluation. You will be researching alongside a team of experts in digital design, consultation and evaluation, complimenting your skills in digital design. Although based at Lancaster, the successful candidate will be conducting research in both Lancashire and on occasion the Highlands of Scotland.


The Applicant
The successful applicant will have a good first degree, a postgraduate degree and/or equivalent research experience in a field relevant to digital technologies, particularly HCI, Computer Science or Interaction Design. Crucially they will also have excellent practical making and doing skills with web technologies; some communities the project will engage can only be reliably reached via the web, so it is critical that applicants are skilled in the practice of making, adapting and experimenting with web technologies. Strong applicants will have the ability to take full advantage of seeing the tools and systems they create in use, both in terms of practical design evaluation and theoretical reflection.

Successful applicants will we awarded a scholarship covering feels and providing an annual stipend of £13,863, in line with RCUK rates.


The Institutions
ImaginationLancaster is an internationally recognised design and innovation research centre in Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA). We conduct applied and theoretical research into people, products, places and their interactions. We work across traditional boundaries, linking disciplines and collaborating with organisations and universities nationally and internationally. Our work involves both experimental blue-sky conceptual development, as well as applied research that create pathways from the laboratory to the marketplace. Meanwhile, the Glasgow School of Art is one of the oldest and most highly regarded art schools in the UK.


Making an Application
The deadline for applications is the 19th of October 2014.
To apply complete the online application and submit attachments here:
http://www.postgraduate.lancs.ac.uk/Pages/default.aspx

For an informal discussion about this opportunity, please contact Dr. Leon Cruickshank
([Email Address Removed]). For general information about ImaginationLancaster and Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA), please visit imagination.lancaster.ac.uk and www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/LICA