Dr Hannah Drayson

Hannah Drayson co-convenes the Transtechnology Research group, a community of over 20 graduate researchers in the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Plymouth.

Since the beginning of her career, Hannah’s work has been situated at the intersection of arts, science and technology. As an artist and designer, she has explored a range of media as platforms for creative enquiry, including; web and digital design, interactive art, live coding, reconstructed psychological instruments, hypnotic performances, lists, and live events– mainly parties.

Her explorations of suggestion as medical and psychological practice led her to train in hypnotism (stage and hypnotherapy) and microphenomenological interview techniques, which offer research topics as well as methods in her work. Her PhD, completed in 2011, led her to an ongoing exploration of the paradoxical phenomenon of the placebo effect and the role of affect and creativity in medicine and healing. Her current research develops these concerns with the aesthetic dimensions of biomedicine, which raise questions of ontology, technology and embodiment. As a member of the Faculty of Minor Disturbances she is currently undertaking research that unexpectedly involves Raymond Chandler and porridge.

She is currently writing a series of papers on the theme of taste, medicine and the everyday which have involved desk research across a range of disciplines, as well as collaborative workshops and experiments in cooking and recipe writing. The first paper of the series, titled “Don’t Sugar Coat It”, is published in online journal Feast. She is currently working on the second paper, “At the Bitter End” which reflects on how human co-evolution with plants can help us to think about what it means to “take a bitter pill”.

Qualifications

Ph.D. Gestalt Biometrics and their Applications: Instrumentation, Objectivity and Poetics. University of Plymouth.
EPSRC funded research into the use of biometric technologies in interactive arts practice. This project combining theoretical approaches from medical humanities, arts and STS with practice-based interactive artworks focussed on the epistemological consequences of ideas such as objectivity and instrumental realism in creative practices that repurpose medical instrumentation.

MSc. Digital Art and Technology. University of Plymouth.

B.A. (Hons) Critical Fine Art Practice. Brighton University.