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.

Teaching interests

Doctoral Research Supervision
Research Degree Completions
Dr. Joanna Griffin, (Transtechnology Research). Changing Space: The Social and Experiential Culture of Spacecraft and the Public Domain (2014).
Edith Doove, (Transtechnology Research). Exploring the Curatorial as Creative Act. (2017)
Eugenia Stamboliev, (CogNovo). The social robot between social, surveying and digital media. (2018).
Abigail Jackson, (Transtechnology Research). Technology and Human Interaction in Autism Movement Therapy (AHRC funded). (2014-2019).
Guy Edmonds, (CogNovo). The Flicker Effect. (2014-2020).

Current PhD Supervision;
Director of Studies:
Stephanie Moran, (3D3 Scholarship) Symbiont Encounters: Ecological Fictioning and Networked Media. (2018-)
Lucinda Guy. Artist designed systems in Community Radio. (2018-)
Finnegan, P., The digital image according to its hieroglyphic and animistic capacities (2018-)
Welsman, L., AI: A deep history (working title) (2019-)
Dorothea-Smith, J., Vision – An excavation of the retinal space, physiological, phenomenological, cultural and spacial (2019-)
Turton, S., Technologies of Soul (2018-)

2nd Supervisor
Amani Alsaad, Art Therapy in a non-western context. (2015-)
Jane Hutchinson, (Trantechnology Research). Not me – not not me: concerning the mediation of dissolving actualities and performing self. (2014-)
Jacqui Knight, (CogNovo). The ‘frisson event’ a unified experience of simultaneity (2014-)
James Sweeting, (Transtechnology Research). The impact of technological constructivism on representation in videogames (2015-)

3rd Supervisor
Nicholas Peres. (Transtechnology Research). Immersive cinematics in medical simulation: interfaces for the patient voice (2014-)
Becalelis Brodskis, (3D3 Scholarship) Re-Imagine your town: Co-created archives of community urban visions. (2016-)

Ph.D. Theses Examined
Ellen Sebring, (2015) University of Plymouth. Visual Narrative; A theory and model for image-driven digital historiography based on a case study of China’s Boxer Uprising (c. 1900)

Research groups

• Arts Research
• Transtechnology