This practice-based PhD will examine how creative practices can expand, challenge and transform our understanding of the Future of Care and Wellbeing. Creative practice generates critical perspectives on current and historic healthcare, but is also uniquely positioned to generate as yet unimagined forms, ideas and structures that offer new ways to consider the myriad ‘wicked’ healthcare problems we face. We invite applications with clear intent and interest grown from an applicant’s creative practice and exploring the following (but not limited to these) socially urgent topics:
· Pandemic Proofing or Recovery: for example, evaluating everyday settings and practices to problematise and identify potential health hazard/threat with epidemiological evidence; exploring alternate designs and service approaches to prevent future spread and/or support recovery.
· Interrogating and envisioning Health and Care asks how can art and design contribute to care by inviting practitioners to identify current issues (e.g. Health Inequalities, health stigmas, care service-design and delivery, Art and design for medical/health education) and suggest ways of caring or understanding human condition in ill health.
· Virtual Care: for example, exploring the creative development of programmes to support remote access and engagements in contexts of ageing, chronic illness and disability.
· Culture, Heritage, Technology might examine how creative practice engages with integrate these elements for purpose of promoting accessibility, engagement, and wellbeing.
· Therapeutic Encounters and objects (e.g. participatory arts-health/ design-health, socially engaged art practice, place-making) design to address the needs and promote the wellbeing of individuals or population group in a variety of settings.
The inquiry could be engaged in a variety of processes and outputs, including applied, prototype, speculative, ‘toolkit, artistic or conceptual nature.
We intend that the new project will be supervised by a team including new L4L Reader, Michael Tan, Michael’s unique international and interdisciplinary training in art and design, humanities and social science have led him to develop and support numerous projects that explore art and design practices in relation to health & well-being, care, ageing, and human flourishing.
The successful applicant will be based within a number of vibrant connected communities: the SHU Doctoral Community, the Culture and Creativity Research Institute (CCRI), the Art and Design Research Centre and Lab4Living. Lab4Living is a trans-disciplinary community of researchers in art, design, healthcare and other creative practices, working to address real world health and wellbeing issues. Lab4Living is one of the longest-established living labs in Europe and has generated more than 100 research projects and collaborations in in over fifteen countries. In 2019, the Lab was awarded £4 million in funding from Research England in recognition of its excellence in design-led research, enabling it to grow its focus on the 100-year life and the future home. This application is for one of three new PhD Studentships, to join the existing cohort of 8 students.
The CCRI PhD community includes students in art, communication, design, media, performance, history and creative writing. Students participate in focused disciplinary and interdisciplinary training, complementing University-level research training. Areas of the CCRI PhD programme generated sector-leading scores for research culture and satisfaction in the last two Postgraduate Research Experience Satisfaction Survey. CCRI PhD students work within in a vibrant staff research culture, often being supervised in interdisciplinary teams. For examples of staff and doctoral research see:
https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact Requirements: Applicants should have at least a 2:1 Honours degree (or equivalent) and a Masters qualification in a relevant subject area. The ideal candidate would have a strong creative practice track record that conveys their experience and potential to undertake a PhD enquiry in response to the proposed themes. Where English is not first language we require a minimum overall IELTS score of 7.0 with a minimum of 7.0 in each component, or an accepted equivalent. We strongly suggest you contact us in advance to discuss your application with relevant supervisors.
How to apply: We strongly recommend you contact the lead academic, Michael Tan
[email protected] , copying in Dr Becky Shaw
[email protected] , Postgraduate Research Tutor for Art & Design to discuss your application
Start date for studentship: 1st February 2021
Interviews are scheduled for: week commencing 2nd November 2020 For information on how to apply please visit
https://www.shu.ac.uk/research/degrees Your application should be emailed to by
[email protected] closing date of 9th October 2020.
