PhD Digital Art and Technology

i-DAT’s underpinning research concerns making ‘data’ palpable, tangible and accessible. It involves creating new experiences through the design and construction of networked, sensing and intelligent ‘things’ and software. Digital Practice is central to exploring the significance that data, its harvesting, processing and manifestation, can play in contemporary culture.

The research is collaborative and participatory at its core, engaging audiences and communities and cultivating a rich transdisciplinary approach through collaborations across the arts and sciences.

This full time or part time doctoral programme is suitable for people who have a particular research question or topic in mind, and wish to explore this through independent study in order to produce an original contribution to the subject. If you aspire to a research career this is the most appropriate research degree to undertake.

You will be guided by a small supervisory team of academic experts under the direction of a Director of Studies. If you do not already have a masters degree, you may be interested in one of our masters level research degrees – for instance, our ResM Art, Design and Architecture (which enables a transfer directly into the PhD programme if you are making excellent progress), or else an MPhil degree. Further details about the University’s research degree awards. You will be expected to fully engage with skills development and training and to present your research in a range of scholarly contexts. Your PhD will be assessed via submission of either a written thesis (approximately 80,000 words), or one that combines critical writing with artistic, creative and/or professional practice, and a viva voce (an oral examination).

Applicants are expected to have completed a masters level qualification to a high standard (e.g. at 'merit' or 'distinction' level) as well as either a good 2:1 or first class honours undergraduate degree in an area of study appropriate to your project proposal. We are happy to consider equivalent qualifications (for instance, you may have studied different subjects at undergraduate and masters level but have established an artistic practice since then).