This free event will explore the growing trend toward non-text and multimedia research outputs being submitted as part of PhD theses and the challenges that this posses to researchers, universities and libraries. It is co-hosted by the British Library’s Digital Research Team with EThOS, the national database of UK doctoral theses.
Almost all theses are produced as text-based documents but universities are gradually allowing new forms of thesis to be submitted for the research degree, which might include research outputs such as websites, software, film, creative performance and databases. It would seem that while students often wish to include mutlimedia research outputs with their thesis, the technical, cultural and logistical challenges of doing so are rife.
This Digital Conversation event will therefore consider the issues faced by PhD researchers producing innovative work but struggling to get that work into the thesis format. Speakers will share their experiences working in cutting edge research practices.
Coral Manton is PhD candidate, part of the i-DAT research and design collective at Plymouth University and her research is funded by the 3D3 Consortium. Coral’s research brings together her professional background in museums and immersive digital arts practice. She is currently developing an immersive museum collection database, producing data visualisations from the collection in storage for enhanced curatorial and visitor understanding, working with Birmingham Museums Trust.
As part of her doctoral experience, Coral is undertaking a research placement at the British Library investigating multimedia and non-text PhD research outputs and how EThOS might develop to meet the challenge of evolving digital theses.
The other speakers include:
Craig Hamilton: Craig is an AHRC Midland3Cities-funded PhD research candidate at Birmingham City University. He is exploring this through the development of The Harkive Project, an online, crowd-sourced method of gathering data from people about the detail of their music listening experience.
Tara Copplestone: Tara is a PhD student at the universities of York and Aarhus. Her research into “archaeogaming” interrogates how creating and communicating through the video-game media form might provide novel methods of constructing arguments about archaeology. Part of her thesis is being produced as a video-game so that the arguments can be played rather than read, and the construction behind them interrogated within the framework of the video-game medium itself.
Imogen Lesser: Imogen is a PhD candiadte at the Universiy of Kent. Imogen’s doctoral research examines Mervyn Peake’s literary language in The Gormenghast Trilogy as a potential spatial design tool. She has created a series of digital and hand-drawn architectural drawings and plaster cast models of a selected number of Peak’s spaces as an integral aspect of her research.
Schedule
18.00 Drinks & nibbles
18:15 Welcome by the Digital Research team
18.20 Introduction to multimedia research & EThOS by Coral Manton
18.30 Panel discussion
19.15 Pause for thought and refill glasses
19.25 Open discussion & questions
19:50 Closing remarks
20.00 Departure
Attendance is free but demand is high and places are strictly limited.
If you wish to attend, please book here.