Doggerland – cultural and physical waterscapes of the North Sea (ADSS/DRFART7P/61836)

This practice led Fine Art project will adopt the North Sea as a locus for enquiry, drawing on particular ‘offshore’ histories, geographies and constructions of this simultaneously physical and social space.

Commentators in different disciplines have observed the seas invisibility, its consignment to the margins of the terrestrial - a surface to be traversed, void to be plumbed, volume to be cut through, Barthes’ non signifying field, no where, no thing, ‘meaningless materiality’. In parallel interest has grown in the ways in which its physical liveness is both negotiated and has agency within the various forms of legal, military, recreational and commercial, human interactions that occur within and across it.

This study will test the capacity of Fine Art as a materially engaged /embodied practice to:
• Contribute to new ontologies of the fluid
• Support examination of social / physical phenomena from multidimensional perspectives
• ‘Map’ the local and the national in ways that support consideration of the wider inter - relationship of human and natural
• Test the relationship of located practice to knowledge production

The project will benefit from research expertise arising from the AHRC funded Northern Peripheries; Interdisciplinary Research Network Apr 13 - Sep 14 (on which Northumbria was the lead organisation) which explored historical, present and future representations and practices of the UK ‘north’ and incorporation within the innovative BxNU Institute of Contemporary Art partnership between Northumbria University and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary.

Enquiries regarding this studentship should be made to: Professor Rona Lee, [Email Address Removed]

For further details of how to apply, entry requirements and the application form, see
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/research/postgraduate-research-degrees/how-to-apply/
Please ensure you quote the advert reference above on your application form.