Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management (UoA 36)

Results

Our submission reflected new collaborations between the research of the School of Media and Performance and that of the School of Creative Technologies. Research activities within the submission are structured across two key themes: Digital Transformations, with a focus on the material preservation of digital artefacts and Media Cultures, embracing research on historical and contemporary media, cultural and creative industries. These themes reflect our commitment to undertake research on the global transformations of computing and digitization in order to help transform the ways in which contemporary arts and humanities are understood. Research has been focused on the preservation of the material base of culture, and on the contexts of cultural/media texts in circuits of production, exhibition and consumption.

11 staff were submitted, with two impact case studies illustrating how digital preservation research and collaboration with the gaming industry have had immediate benefit for global external agencies such as museums, archives, libraries and digital games producers.

• 100% of the research impact was rated as either as being outstanding (60%) or as having very considerable impacts (40%), placing Portsmouth first for impact in the Alliance Group and the South East region and in the top ten universities nationally.
• This is the first time UoP has submitted to this unit and 90% of research is internationally recognised and above.
• The research environment was ranked at 90% as either world-leading (40%) or internationally excellent (50%) with a GPA of 3.30.
• 20% of outputs are ranked as world-leading (4*) and 55% as either world-leading or internationally excellent, placing Portsmouth 8th of the post-1992 universities.
• The submission is in the top 40 universities for research power in the unit’s disciplines in UK higher education.
• Research impact in this unit places Portsmouth in the Top Ten for all universities with a GPA of 3.60.

Research groups / Research themes

Centre for Cultural and Creative Research

The Centre for Cultural and Creative Research (CCCR) advances research across the cultural industries and creative arts. Work within CCCR applies a wide range of analytic, critical, historical perspectives to the examination of creative writing, film, media, music, television, and theatre and performance. Innovation in creative practice is fostered through practice-led research and research-led practice.

Centre for Cultural and Industrial Technologies Research (CiTech)

The Centre for Cultural and Industrial Technologies Research (CiTech) was established in 2009 to focus the computer-based research activities of the School of Creative Technologies (CT) and the Institute of Industrial Research (IIR), both within the Faculty of the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCi) at the University of Portsmouth

The research in CiTech falls mainly into two strands:

• The application of advanced computer-based technologies in a wide range of domains (digital preservation, healthcare, manufacturing, defence & security, education, entertainment, knowledge management, science etc.)
• Research into the creative technologies themselves, and their impact on society.

Impact case studies

Preserving the digital future: the impact of the TOTEM (Trustworthy Online Technical Environment Metadata) registry on preservation professional policy and practice.

A global consortium of libraries has adopted the innovative TOTEM registry data model to address urgent issues surrounding the preservation of digital artefacts. The core challenge for digital archiving is to match potentially obsolete software that originally created artefacts – ‘complex’ objects with sound and visuals as well as data information – with later computing platforms that can thus preserve them. The TOTEM project has effected major change in the technical specifications of preservation: its technical strategy for ‘emulation’ enhances previous processes through which old files are ‘migrated’. End-users confirm that TOTEM has had significant cultural and technical impact on the preservation practices of national libraries including the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia, and US National Archives and Records Administration. Benefit to these organisations is technical, societal and economic, contributing to viable, long-term solutions in digital preservation policy.

Game changing: games research creates new knowledge of digital games environments, improves industry perception of collaborations with academia and results in commercially successful, award-winning products.

An innovative approach towards researching story-telling and its relevance in games design has resulted in cultural and economic impact in the creative sector and generated novel approaches that have influenced creative practice in the games industry. As a direct result of the research, an independent games development studio has been established and two commercial game titles have been released, with commercial sales to date of approximately £1.65m. The first release, Dear Esther, has been a major commercial success, has also won several industry recognition awards and is cited as directly responsible for the genesis of a new gaming genre.

Infrastructure and facilities

The University has invested heavily in top-class research facilities. Staff and PGRS directly benefit form world-class facilities required for research into the media and digital industries: Virtual Reality, green-screen, and motion-capture studios, analogue and digital film, photography and broadcasting facilities, industry-leading editing software, digital gaming and animation suites, cinema-quality projection screening rooms are all housed centrally within a new, purpose-built environment for the enhancement of multi-disciplinary research in the digital, creative and cultural industries.