Postgraduate research in the School of Art, Design and Architecture
Our specialist areas of research excellence and postgraduate research opportunities
FourTet and Squidsoup at the Sydney Opera House Photo: Mark Metcalfe
The School of Art, Design and Architecture offers a breadth of postgraduate research programmes that are distinct in their focus on digital art and technology practice, transdisciplinary epistemologies, artistic ecologies, photographic and media art, urban and smart cities as well as building performance research.
Our research staff are active practitioners and longstanding academics within their fields and between them have a wealth of successful AHRC, EPSRC, and British Academy research grants as well as Horizon2020 and other EU funded projects.
Our school has a strong connection to the city through its major galleries, and independent and national organisations such as Plymouth Culture, and The South West Film and TV Archive Centre, among others.
Through its international staff, the school looks outwards with research projects based in India, China, Brazil, USA, the rest of Europe, and the Middle East. Located in Devon, South West of England, the School is a hub of advanced studies into a wealth of creative practice linked to art, design and architecture.
Postgraduate research programmes in art, design and architecture
The school supports several PhD programmes (available full time and/or part time).
Please contact Dr Jane Grant (Associate Head of School for Graduate Affairs, School of Art, Design and Architecture) if you wish to have an informal discussion about starting a research degree.
- PhD in Art and Media
- PhD Architecture
- PhD Built Environment
- PhD Codex (Full time only)
- PhD Design
- PhD Digital Art and Technology
- PhD Planetary Collegium (This programme is no longer recruiting students)
- PhD Transtechnology Research
Transtechnology PhD student Agatha Haines (Agi)
featured in The Guardian.
i-DAT, Planetary Collegium and CogNovo students join
the VR/IVT Research Group
PhD student Yan Wang Preston wins the
Syngenta Photography Award.
Congratulations to PhD Transtechnology Research graduate Dr Claudy Op den Kamp for the publishing her book
The Greatest Films Never Seen
ResM student Rosie Brave's design aims to boost
quality of life for women post mastectomy
Transtechnology researcher Dr Joanna Griffin convenes writing workshop at
Kochi-Muziris Biennale
PhD student Laura Hopes is exhibiting a new work ‘marginalia’ as part of “Ingenious Soil”
as part of the Being Human Festival
Doctoral Teaching Assistant Ricky Burke, has been awarded an eCAADE grant to present his paper:
Designing Dementia Design Environments at the eCAADE conference in Lodz, Poland 2018.
João Alencastro has been appointed a Lecturer in the Built Environment
while about to complete his PhD with Professor Pieter De Wilde
Our specialist areas of research excellence:
Expo’ 17: Ecologies annual event
The School of Art, Design and Architecture Expo’ 17: Ecologies is the first showcase of its kind for postgraduate researchers across the school. The exhibition included research projects from across the diverse research groups within the school, with posters, films, and artwork. The concept of ecologies was adopted for this year’s event.
"The interconnected networks existing at the scales of mind, society and the environment."Originally defined, in the mid 19th-century, as the interconnectedness between organisms and their environment, ecology as a concept focuses on the blurred boundaries between biotic and abiotic aspects of the environment, an ecosystem. It is concerned with the processes, the relationships and interactions between those aspects rather than the physicality of their existence per se.
(Felix Guattari, The Three Ecologies, 1989)
Ecology is a totalitarian concept that is encompassing of the transformations and flux of energy and matter in space and time.
The event was organised by our postgraduate researchers in Architecture and Built Environment, Omar Al-Hafith, Adam Guy and Joao Ulrich de Alencastro.
For further information download our PDF.
