Graduate School
New Faculty Research Degree Coordinator for Creative and Cultural Industries
Wed, 02 May 2012 11:26:00 BST
Postgraduate Research Degrees are the highest level of study that a student can undertake and, without doubt, they can be the most rewarding. Research in the fascinating areas covered by the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries are no exception.
Dr Brett Stevens, the newly appointed Faculty Research Degrees Coordinator for CCi said
“I am excited about my new role as it is a fantastic opportunity to interact with researchers from many different backgrounds, with artists rubbing shoulders with engineers, writers with architects, academia with industry”.
“I believe that it is our Faculty’s diversity of experience and approaches that is our main strength. It is because of this that even some of our newer fields like Computer Games research have the potential to make a major impact; both culturally and financially.”
“Second year Creative Technologies PhD Student, Peter Howell is a good example as his research involves developing a commercial computer games title ‘Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs’ which is being developed by thechineseroom; an indie game studio run by Dr Dan Pinchbech, his PhD supervisor and a Reader here in CCi. Peter’s work is a creative endeavour and a scientific study all rolled into one. This is not something that is particularly common in this field, but even though he draws on concepts from many different disciplines it does have common threads with research across CCi and it is the prospect of sharing ideas and experience that makes it so interesting.“
Although it might not be obvious at first glance, Peter’s research seemed to have many similarities with another CCi student, Jorge Balca's research. Jorge is looking at the role of physical performance in the training of opera singers and is supervised by Dr. George Burrows and Dr. Dominic Symonds whose background and research are in musical theatre. The similarity was obviously not mere coincidence, as Jorge and Peter later got to compare their approaches at a training session on practice as research run by Dr Symonds that he was kind enough to offer for students across the Faculty. Dr Stevens said “Given the value of this type of interdisciplinary working, it raises the question of how do we as a Faculty encourage and promote the exchange of ideas and approaches, both creatively and financially? How do we set up a forum for seemingly disparate students and supervisors to communicate experiences in a way that can cross discipline boundaries and inform each other’s work?”
“Every Phd student deserves to have a positive experience and get the support they require, so the challenge for me in the next few years is to ensure this continues to happen for the growing number of CCi students so that we can cultivate the strong Postgraduate Research Environment we all want.”
“It’s within this context that I wanted to take on the role of CCi Faculty Research Degrees Coordinator.”
CCi students are clear that they are getting much helpful support from the Graduate School Development events but equally they have some unique ways of working that they offer to each other and the wider community. Brett affirmed that “We tackle many interesting topics but few outside of our Faculty realise this and I’m hoping to change that for the better.”