Creative Industries

Supervisors / contacts: Dr Esther Asprey, Prof. Aleksandra Galasinska

A cooperation between University of Wolverhampton and The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust to explore recorded narratives of local miners from Ironbridge demonstrated that there is an unexplored potential to use such rich and already existing data. Proposals are invited to explore this possibility with a particular focus on topography, place names, and well as local landmarks as featured in the interviews at hand. On the other hand, a gendered aspect of stories of and about women, who were either working in mines, or were involved in the mining industry in different roles is also invited.

Methodology: Linguistics; Dialectology; Discourse Analysis

Supervisors / contacts: Dr Denise Doyle

Topic: The hidden impacts of AI on planetary resources is currently under scrutiny (Crawford & Joler 2019) yet our desire for an increasingly digital world continues at a relentless pace. Proposals are invited to respond to this theme through arts based and/or interdisciplinary methodologies, and to interrogate the implications of a future world increasingly controlled by AI and its applications.

Methodology: Art and Design Practice; Interdisciplinary

Supervisors / contacts: Prof. Aleksandra Galasinska

Following recovery from the C-19 pandemic some virtual practices of how green spaces were accessed, visited, and imagined are still in place. Proposals are invited to respond to this theme through online ethnography of local parks, recreational grounds, nature reserves, and allotments investigating how online tools, skills, as well as linguistic and visual practices were deployed for virtual recreation and use of green spaces.

Methodology: Online ethnography; Discourse analysis; Visual analysis; Interdisciplinary

Supervisors / contacts: Dr Denise Doyle

Following developments in the second wave of VR immersive spaces are becoming more complex, through mixed reality, and at the same time more accessible as real alternative spaces for the experience of both place and space. Proposals are invited to respond to this theme through arts and/or design-based methodologies, exploring the potential of how to create both space and place as an alternative to, and augmentation of, the physical world.

Methodology: Art and Design Practice; Interdisciplinary

Supervisors / contacts: Dr Euripides Altintzoglou

Images are inseparable from life, as they have come to define cultural trends, raise political awareness, and inform ethical responsibility. Contemporary image-making is dynamic practice as images develop into modes of communication that inter-operate in variable contexts. Proposal are invited to explore the role of image-based creative agency in relation to a set of synergies between image production and dissemination, critical analysis and communication strategies, advanced technological awareness of conceptual diversification.

Methodology: Photography, Fine Art, Philosophy, Critical Theory

Supervisors / contacts: Dr Euripides Altintzoglou

Change is a constant force that shapes and reshapes the world around us. Contemporary art practices bring visibility to manifestations of political discourse but also to the subtle, often overlooked instances of resistance and resilience. In a world marked by division and discord, socially engaged art practice emerges as a means for bridging divides. Proposal are invited to explore practical and/or theoretical approaches that adapt to historical, social, and cultural conditions in order to sustain the transformational role of art to act as a catalysts for change.

Methodology: Fine Art, Philosophy, Critical Theory

Supervisors / contacts: Dr Robert Geal; Dr Fran-Pheasant-Kelly

Ecological issues are an emerging area of interest in film studies. The proposed research will consider one of two main topics in the field – how ecocinema functions as an attempt to represent ‘nature’ as a meaningful alternative to film’s more customary anthropocentrism; or how eco-apocalyptic and eco-dystopian cinema relates to cultural anxieties about climate change and other forms of ecological degradation.

Methodology: Textual analysis; Ecocriticism

Supervisors / contacts: Dr Robert Geal; Dr Fran-Pheasant-Kelly

Adaptation scholars have only recently addressed ecological issues in a systematic manner. This opens up the possibility for research in a number of areas relating to adaptation, including analyses of the changing representations of humans and nonhumans in texts which are adapted through time, across cultures, and between media, along the lines of Robert Geal’s (2022) discussion of the intertextual journey from ‘Pygmalion’ to Frankenstein to the Terminator and Toy Story franchises.

Methodology: Textual analysis; Ecocriticism; Adaptation studies

Supervisors / contacts: Dr Robert Geal; Dr Fran-Pheasant-Kelly

Topic: There is an absence of sustained analysis of communities which are not regularly represented in film and television culture, and of how those communities respond to those representations. This absence is particularly regrettable because such communities play an important role in various political events. Recent biopics about celebrities from Wolverhampton (The Boy with the Topknot; Raised by Wolves; Toast), for example, depict the city as a ‘left behind’ community from which the protagonists escape. How do local audiences react to this characterisation of the city?

Methodology: Reception studies; audience analysis; textual analysis

Supervisors / contacts: Dr. William Pawlett, Prof. Meena Dhanda

There is growing awareness that Capitalism is reaching absolute environmental limits to its expansion, however the myth that technology can deliver 'sustainable solutions' is enshrined in corporate, political and popular discourse. Proposals are invited which explore the myths of technology and sustainability from the perspective of critical theory. Proposals examining the ethics of anti-consumerism, and of indigenous movements against extractivism are also welcome.

Methodology: interdisciplinary mixed methods; critical, narratological and interpretative analysis, participatory action research

Supervisors / contacts: Dr Benjamin Halligan

New Hollywood is typically hailed as the last “Golden Age” of Hollywood film-making, but its influence continues to be felt as these once marginal examples of “small” film-making gained canonical status. The projected study will look to reassess New Hollywood from a number of possible

perspectives: aesthetic innovations; the influence of European New Waves; the politics of New Hollywood in respect to the pre-Reagan era, and the ending of that era; the reinvention of Hollywood after New Hollywood via the blockbuster; auteur-based studies for any figures associated with New Hollywood; New Hollywood’s star system; method acting in New Hollywood.

Supervisors / contacts: Dr Benjamin Halligan

Drawing on work in my co-edited collections The Arena Concert and Diva, this projected area of study will look to pop (historical or contemporary) in terms of the contested, or boosted, relationship with feminisms. Subjects can include, but are not limited to: performance and empowerment; punk and pop; fashion and photography in relation to pop; image-creation, post-Warhol; stardom; uses of social media by and for fan bases; liveness and world touring; liveness and intimacy; the comeback and media criticism; popular musicology.

Supervisors / contacts: Dr Benjamin Halligan

Drawing on my monographs and edited collections in relation to British cinema (Michael Reeves, Adult Themes, Hotbeds of Licentiousness, Desires for Reality), this proposed research will look to elements of British cinema (historic or contemporary) that have remained underexplored or marginalised. Topics may include, but are not limited to: trans cultures and characters; shifts in the portrayals of homosexuality cultures and characters; imagining the nation state, particularly during the time of war; British cinema and Thatcherism; the British star system; performing class; projecting Britishness on the international screen; evolution of the period drama; British cinema; auteur perspectives from non-British film-makers; adaptations; auteur-based studies.