Find out more about self-funded PhD projects in areas where we already have supervisors active and engaged in the research topic in Cambridge School of Art.
Dr Elena Cologni
Dr Hilary Bungay
Dr Merel Visse (external, Drew University, US)
Advisors from Cambridge Museums TBC
Dialogic and social engaged approaches in creative research can be very effective in tacking difficult situations which have arisen from the current pandemic. These are thought to become tools to develop resilience.
In particular, critical relational approaches can be understood through care ethics principles. These are mostly driven by an interest in supporting individual and social wellbeing. Through co-production, and social engagement with local and international communities new strategies are likely to arise. We welcome practitioners interested in testing new methods within interdisciplinary approaches.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
Prof Martin Salisbury
Dr. Katherina Manolessou
Dr Becky Palmer
Dr Nanette Hoogslag
We seek proposals for practice-based research projects within the broad field of illustration, visual storytelling and picturebook-making but with a particular focus on emergent illustration practices within the context of visual communication. Research projects are welcomed from high level practitioners and researchers within the widest area of visual communication.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We invite PhD proposals that examine the expanded field of moving image in contemporary art practices. These may address questions and concerns including the uses of experimental film and video and their means of presentation.
Approaches may consider the examination of experimental film and video and their historical and contemporary contexts; uses of and relationships between analogue and/or digital film and video; questions of materiality/immateriality within the field of moving image; the impact of technology on moving image practices; installation and the moving image; performance and the moving image; the uses of sound within moving image practices; sculptural and spatial concerns in moving image practices; explorations of site and place; questions of spectatorship.
We are interested in cross-disciplinary projects facilitating new modes of expression that locate themselves where some of the above concerns may intersect.
These concerns are closely related to staff research interests relating to documentation, performance and the mediated image (Véronique Chance); Audio, video, text, Sculpture and Site Specificity (Rosanna Greaves); Painting, video, music & text (David Ryan); Experimental and Independent film and questions of presence and place (Neil Henderson); Experimental cinema and digital approaches (Simon Payne).
This project is particularly aligned to the Faculty Research Theme of Creative Technologies. We are also interested in projects that may also link to the other Faculty Research Themes of Performance, Arts & Well-Being; Communities; and Design, Culture & Sustainability and that offer potentially innovative new knowledge and insights to these concerns
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We invite proposals that examine aspects of contemporary painting practice through an active engagement with the practice itself. In this sense the ‘motifs’ are not iconographic or art historical but consider emergent themes within the practice itself that are congruent with broader contexts and formations within the discipline.
This project grows out of staff research into contemporary painting via a series of projects and exhibitions. For example, Phase 1: Painting, Drawing Architecture was an international exhibition (curated Spencer, Ryan) that drew on ideas around construction, virtual space, and direct allegiances with other disciples (architecture, urban planning etc.). Another example is Painting and Time, which produced an edited journal volume (Journal of Contemporary Painting, 4:1, co-edited by Ryan) and an involvement with the international series of exhibitions Impermanent Durations. These and other areas may well be relevant to proposed research topics.
We encourage researchers who are investigating their painting practice from a critical and exploratory perspective.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We seek PhD projects concerned with all aspects of painting, printmaking and sculpture in the long nineteenth century (1789-1914). We especially welcome proposals that consider the art of this period in a transnational, pan-European or colonial context but also welcome projects that propose to interrogate one artist or artistic aspect in depth.
We have experience in leading projects across nineteenth-century culture. Nina Lübbren has published books and essays on nineteenth-century rural artists' colonies in Europe and on visual narrative in nineteenth-century painting. Elizabeth Ludlow is Director of the Nineteenth-Century Studies Research Unit and has published on various aspects of literature and theology including the Pre Raphaelites.
To discuss your interests, please get in touch with Nina Lübbren at [email protected]
Cambridge, or by blended distance learning.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We invite PhD proposals that examine the continuing impact of technological developments in reproductive media within the expanded field of printmaking. These may address intermedial approaches to printmaking and the reproducible image, where new technological and reproductive approaches also include video, digital media, sound works and performance, alongside more traditional ‘hand-made’ works.
We are interested in projects that locate themselves where these cross and that facilitate new modes of address and expression. Projects should seek to examine the role of print in a changing landscape of technology and the dissemination of art-practice.
This is closely related to staff research into the contemporary field of printmaking, specifically RE:PRINT, outputs of which included an International exhibition & symposium and the development of an Artist’s Book as a hybrid of artwork and publication, that drew on the above concerns.
Questions and relating to the notion of print as both artwork and multiple and debates regarding what print is in the 21st Century may inform potential proposals as well as concerns relating to the mediated image, the role of technology, material/immaterial presence, and aspects of print publishing and dissemination.
This project is particularly aligned to the Faculty Research Theme of Creative Technologies. We are also interested in projects that may also make links to the other Faculty Research Themes of Performance, Arts & Well-Being; Communities; and Design, Culture & Sustainability and that offer potentially innovative new knowledge and insights to these concerns.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We seek PhD projects concerned with aspects of visual narrative in art and/or film, including projects that link such narratives to literature. We especially welcome proposals that address narratological theories and methodologies.
We have experience in leading projects on visual narrative and on feminist narratologies. Nina Lübbren has published books and essays on visual narrative in nineteenth-century painting and has expertise in film history. Tory Young has published articles on feminist and queer narratology and organised the 2013 Cambridge conference on 'The Future of Feminist Narratology'.
To discuss your interests, please get in touch with Nina Lübbren at [email protected]
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We invite proposals that examine, in some way, the possibilities of the voice, text or body in relation to performance in contemporary art practices. These might also address aspects of recitation, musical performance or physical, durational concerns. Additionally, the work may well explore media such as video, photography and the relationships between performance and documentation as well as the various histories of performance practices in general. Specific aspects or thinking across a range of these facets is encouraged.
These concerns grow out of direct staff research projects concerning performance, text, video, documentation and the role of technology, such as the Thames Run from Source to Sea (Chance, 2020) or Recitativo/Clouds and Noise – Fragments After Lucretius and Negri (2015 -). Questions around mediation, technology ‘liveness’, presence, mapping, place, physicality and embodiment, concerns relating to the ‘re-use’ of texts and their performance, as well as the relationship and place of the audience, may well inform potential proposals.
These align to the four current Faculty Research Themes of Performance, Arts, Well-Being & Technology; Communities; Design, Culture & Sustainability and Creative Technologies. The cross-disciplinary nature of the proposed PGR project not only builds on existing research but offers potentially innovative new knowledge and insights to these concerns.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
If you have an idea for a project that does not align with one of the pre-defined projects above, please contact us at [email protected]