Tag: artistic research

Critical Heritage Stories, Communities, and Technologies: Eastney Engine Houses and the Past, Present, and Future of Industrial Heritage Museums with Portsmouth City Council and the University of Southampton

Start date: 1st October 2026
Application Deadline: 1 June 2026

The Portsmouth City Council and the University of Southampton are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative doctoral studentship starting 1 October 2026 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme.

This practice-based research project will examine the past, present, and future of industrial heritage museums through a case study of Eastney Engine Houses, in dialogue with Portsmouth Museums’ local and social history collections.

This project will be jointly supervised by Bruce Doswell (Eastney Engineer) and Katy Ball (Curator of Social History), Portsmouth City Council, and Dr Megen de Bruin-Molé, Dr Alexandra Anikina, and Dr Dimitra Gkitsa in the department of Art and Media Technology, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. The student will be expected to spend time at both Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, and Portsmouth City Council as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK. The student will also be embedded in the activity of Critical Infrastructures and Image Politics research group.

Key Dates:

Shortlisted candidates will be notified by 18 June 2026, and interviews will take place online on MS Teams Wednesday, 15 July 2026. Interview candidates will be notified of the panel’s decision and formal offer letters issued as soon as possible following interviews.

Project Overview

This practice-based research project, working with Eastney Engine Houses as a case study, explores how post-industrial heritage might operate as a “living archive,” tracing lineages of labour, technology, and community across entangled histories of colonisation, military innovation, urban growth, wartime disruption, and post-industrial change. Through curatorial and/or artistic engagement with the Engine Houses and the city’s collections, the project will consider how industrial heritage practice can critically engage with the interwoven relations of people, infrastructures, and environments. 

This research project takes up the potential to open up heritage spaces to more inclusive and participatory forms of interpretation, exploring how artistic and curatorial practice can activate the Eastney Engine Houses as a site of critical reflection, community engagement, and storytelling rooted in the diverse voices of the communities shaped by, and living with, the infrastructures of post-industrialisation. 

Indicative research questions include:

• How can industrial heritage museums act as “living archives” within changing urban contexts, using Eastney Engine Houses as a case study?
• What lineages of labour, materiality, and collective memory, both human and non-human, can be traced through the Eastney Engine Houses?
• Considering Eastney Engine Houses’ volunteer-led conservation efforts, how might collecting present and recent industrial objects reshape community engagement?
• In what ways do industrial heritage sites like Eastney Engine Houses address interwoven relations of people, infrastructures, and environments?

The successful student will be expected to spend time carrying out research and gaining relevant experience with Portsmouth Museums and Portsmouth City Council as part of the studentship.

Details of Award, Fees and Stipend

CDP doctoral training grants fund full-time studentships for 4 years or part-time equivalent up to a maximum of 8 years.

The award pays tuition fees up to the value of the full-time home fee (Research Councils UK Indicative Fee Level is£5,238 per year). Students with an ‘overseas’ fee status are welcome to apply but will need to pay themselves the difference between the covered fee and the international fee for PhD in Art or Design (indicative international fee is £20,100 per year). The successful candidate will be required to reside in the UK until completion of the PhD.

The award pays an annual stipend for all students (both home and international). This stipend is tax free, and is the equivalent of an annual salary, enabling the student to pay living costs. The UKRI Minimum Doctoral Stipend for full-time candidates is £21,805. There is also a CDP maintenance payment of £600 per year. The successful candidate is eligible to receive an additional travel and related expenses grant during the course of the project courtesy of Portsmouth City Council worth up to £500 per year for 4 years. If undertaking part-time study these amounts will be pro-rated.

The successful candidate will be encouraged to participate in professional development events and activities organised for all Collaborative Doctoral Partnership students who are registered with different universities and studying with cultural and heritage organisations across the UK. These activities are organised by a coordination team based at the V&A and are designed to provide CDP researchers with the knowledge, networks and skills to thrive in their future careers.

Further details can be found on the UKRI website.

Eligibility

• The studentship is open to both home and international applicants (see above for fees information for international students).

• Students can take up the studentship as either full or part-time.

• Students should have a Masters Degree in a relevant subject (including, but not limited to: Art, Anthropology, Art History, History, Curating, Literature and Creative Writing, Exhibition Studies, Conservation Science, Critical Infrastructure Studies, Science and Technology Studies), orbe able to demonstrate equivalent experience in a professional setting in critical and creative practice (including, but not limited to art, curating, design, media, technology).

• Applicants must be able to demonstrate an interest in the museum and heritage sector, galleries and exhibition studies, curatorial and/or artistic practice and research, and potential and enthusiasm for developing skills more widely in related areas.

• We encourage applications from a diverse range of people, from different backgrounds and career stages. Thinking of applying but concerned you might not meet all the requirements? Studies show that certain groups are less likely to apply to a role if they don’t meet 100% of the requirements. Accordingly, if you are (for example) a women, Black, Asian, from a Global Majority background, LGBTQI+, neurodivergent or disabled and are interested in this opportunity, we encourage you to apply, even if you personally feel you may not be ready or qualified.

To be classed as a home student, candidates must meet the following criteria:

• Be a UK or Irish National (meeting residency requirements), or
• Have settled status, or
• Have pre-settled status (meeting residency requirements), or
• Have indefinite leave to remain or enter.

More details: the latest revision of the AHRC Training Grant Funding Guide is available here. All applicants must meet UKRI terms and conditions for funding.

Project details and how to apply

Please apply through the University of Southampton’s online PhD Application Portal, noting in the application that you would like to be considered for the AHRC CDP project at Eastney Engine Houses. We would also advise you to contact the Admissions team (fah-pgr-apply@southampton.ac.uk) directly to ensure they are aware of your application and can support you from the start with any documentation needed.

You will need to select either the ‘PhD Fine Art’ or ‘PhD Design’ to be considered for this opportunity.It does not matter which option you choose, or whether you feel your project explicitly fits one of these two descriptions.

All CDP projects are part of a nationwide programme called the Collaborative Doctoral Partnership consortium. The CDP asks all applicants to complete a voluntary EDI monitoring form here. All responses are anonymous.

Support and Reasonable Adjustments for the Application Process

Please reach out to project supervisors and/or the University of Southampton Doctoral Admissions team in the course of the application process with any access riders or reasonable adjustments. Support or adjustments may include (but are not limited to):

• Opportunity to speak with project supervisors at HEI and CDP Award Holder about the project and the process.
• Opportunity to speak with contacts within the HEI and/or CDP Award Holder regarding institutional support systems (e.g. neurodiversity, racial diversity and LGBTQIA+ networks, mental health support, support for carers).
• Access to interview questions and an insight into the interview process (e.g. selection criteria used).
• Opportunity to speak with active CDP students to ask questions regarding student experience as part of the CDP scheme—in this case through the central coordination group at the V&A.

The Critical Infrastructures and Image Politics (CIIP) research group is pleased to invite you to a keynote talk by Jonathan W. Y. Gray, on Thursday 12 March 2026, 12:00-13.00 GMT (keynote in the Digital Media Symposium: Research and Practices, Lecture Theatre A, Winchester School of Art, organised by MA Digital Media Practices team and doctoral researchers at WSA)

Public Data Cultures

Jonathan W. Y. Gray’s recent book, Public Data Cultures, nurtures critical and creative engagements with public data as cultural material, medium of participation and as site of transnational politics. It explores how activists, journalists, artists and others work with public data as well as looking at how critical perspectives can make a difference in practice.

Jonathan W. Y. Gray (@jwyg) is a researcher critically and creatively exploring the roles of digital data, methods and infrastructures in shaping how we know and live together. His work is grounded in feminist science and technology studies, new media studies, critical theory and philosophy. He is Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Culture and Reader in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London.

He is author of Public Data Cultures (Polity, 2025) and co-editor of Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access (with Martin Eve, MIT Press, 2020) and The Data Journalism Handbook: Towards A Critical Data Practice (with Liliana Bounegru, Amsterdam University Press, 2021). His research has been published in journals such as New Media and Society; Information, Communication & Society; Big Data and Society; and Statistique et Société.

He is co-founder of the Public Data Lab; Research Associate at the Digital Methods Initiative at the University of Amsterdam; and Research Associate at the médialab at Sciences Po founded by Bruno Latour. He has taught with the School for Poetic Computation in NYC. He is part of the advisory group for the Critical Infrastructure Studies Collective and co-editor of the Digital Studies book series on Amsterdam University Press.

He is Hakka-Chinese-Malaysian-Singaporean-American-Scottish, contributes to the work of several anti-racism and East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) community groups and serves on the committee of King’s College London’s Race Equality Network.

Jonathan has been involved in setting up various digital commons initiatives such as The Public Domain Review and Open Data for Tax Justice. He is an advisor to the Fair Tax Foundation, LSE Impact Blog and MediArXiv.

More about his work can be found at jonathangray.org.

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MA Digital Media Practices annual symposium, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton

The annual one day ‘Digital Media: Research and Practice’ Symposium will be held by the MA Digital Media programme and the PGR community at the Winchester School of Art on 12th March 2026. In an era where mobile media, artificial intelligence, 3D digitalisation, immersive platforms and collaborative digital storytelling are continuously transforming modes of cultural interaction. So, in this symposium, we want to bring together academics, postgraduate students and industry practitioners to showcase their research and creative media practice to collectively contemplate how to redefine the bubble of digital media in research and practices. The symposium is expected to run from 10.30 am to 4.30 pm, with lunch and refreshment breaks.

See full schedule and register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/digital-media-symposium-research-and-practice-tickets-1984398561516

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Full Spring Speaker Series: https://criticalinfrastructures.net/events/ciip-spring-speaker-series-2026/

CIIP talks are organised in collaboration with MA Digital Media and MA Fine Art in the Department of Art and Media Technology, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton.

The Critical Infrastructures and Image Politics (CIIP) research group is pleased to invite you to a talk by Susan Schuppli on Wednesday 11 March, 11:00-12:00, Winchester School of Art, Westside Lecture Theatre and online. Registration link

Cold Cases

COLD CASES advances a materialist account of climate justice grounded in the evidentiary and relational force of ice. Drawing on legal theory, media and sound studies, investigative aesthetics, and Earth jurisprudence, I argue that ice is not simply a signal of climate change, but an active material witness that records harm and issues political claims and calls to action. Glaciers, permafrost, and polar archives function as thermal records of extraction, colonial occupation, and environmental violence, exposing how liberal, human-centered legal frameworks have enabled dispossession while failing to register environmental and distributed forms of harm. By foregrounding the ways in which ice is relational, COLD CASES challenges settler-colonial regimes of evidence and responsibility, and rethinks climate justice from the standpoint of a rapidly warming cryosphere.

bio

SUSAN SCHUPPLI is an artist and researcher based in the UK, whose work is situated at the intersections between environmental struggles, climate science, and affected communities with a specific focus on the cryosphere. Investigations span legal analysis and public advocacy as well as theoretical reflection and creative exploration in order to understand how the transformations brought about by global burning are generating new forms of evidence. She is Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths as well as a Fellow and Board Chair of Forensic Architecture. https://susanschuppli.com/

Full Spring Speaker Series: https://criticalinfrastructures.net/events/ciip-spring-speaker-series-2026/

CIIP talks are organised in collaboration with MA Digital Media and MA Fine Art in the Department of Art and Media Technology, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton.

March – May 2026

All events are in person and online

Susan Schuppli, Cold Cases – Wednesday 11 March 2026, 11.00-12.00 GMT registration link (Westside Lecture Theatre, Winchester School of Art)

Jonathan W. Y. Gray, Public Data Cultures – Thursday 12 March 2026, 12:00-13.00 GMT registration link (keynote in the Digital Media Symposium: Research and Practices, Lecture Theatre A, Winchester School of Art, organised by MA Digital Media Practices team)

Becky Lyon, The Department of Artecology: Who gets to be an ecologist? – Wednesday 29 April 2026, 11:00-12:00 GMT [registration link will appear here] (Westside Lecture Theatre, Winchester School of Art)

Teresa Dillon – May [date, time, place, registration link will appear here]

CIIP talks are organised in collaboration with MA Digital Media and MA Fine Art in the Department of Art and Media Technology, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton.

Register and get the meeting link: https://events.humanitix.com/fraud-euro-vision

Tuesday 25 November 2025, 5pm GMT
Lecture Theatre B. Winchester School of Art

The Critical Infrastructures and Image Politics (CIIP) research group warmly invites you to a conversation between Audrey Samson (of the artist duo FRAUD), Stephen Cornford, and Yaiza Hernandez Velazquez. The event marks the launch of EURO—VISION: Undergrounding the Critical Mineral, published in October 2025 by K. Verlag.

Lithium, copper, uranium, child labor, and the bed of the deep sea—the mining sector is one of the most contested and problematic arenas of consumer complicity today. EURO—VISION: Undergrounding the Critical Mineral begins not with a location or a specific resource, but with a fundamental question: what counts as extraction today? While we might picture drills and quarries, the deeper story unfolds across financial markets, trade policies, legal frameworks, and the metrics used to define what is “critical” in the first place. Taking the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act as a point of departure, this richly layered volume traces the hidden infrastructures and governing logics that shape how the mining industry moves substances from and across the Earth—and what these minerals, in turn, move with them.

Developed by the artist duo FRAUD (Francisco Gallardo & Audrey Samson) in close collaboration with environmental humanities scholar Michaela Büsse, the book gathers a wide range of voices—artists, scholars, economists, activists, lawyers, and journalists—to reflect on the long genealogies of resource extraction, the valuation paradigms that uphold them, and the terminologies that give them legitimacy. But the story doesn’t stop there. In the context of EURO–VISION, “undergrounding” becomes a tactic: a means of unsettling the structural violence concealed behind seemingly neutral data, and of turning toward the mineral itself—its material presence, its histories, its speculative potential.

Published in K. Verlag’s Processing Process series, EURO—VISION draws on FRAUD’s ongoing, research-led inquiry into critical mineral governance. Combining interviews, visual essays, and commissioned texts, it opens new pathways for thinking about the entanglements between geology, economy, and power. At once analytical and imaginative, the book invites us to see the subterranean anew—not simply as a resource, but as a site of resistance, relation, and possible futures.