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Our PhD successes in recent years include students who have gained positions with the V&A Dundee, employment in industry, lecturing posts, post-doctorate positions, government, the NHS, and many have continued to build successful careers in art and design.

PhD students have received major accolades, including the Scottish National Portrait Award, the Scottish Government Awards Climate Change Fund, and the AHRC Research in Film Awards.

We welcome many types of research, both theoretical and practice-based, reflected in applicants’ distinctive proposals.

Current students

Adam Nasser Benmakhlouf

Pencil illustration of person standing at a table with sticks and dustpan in their hands and  another person sitting on the floor in front of the table with an empty jar in their hands

Communal Words: How can art institutions support non-normative art writing?

Learn more about Adam's research

Alison Price

The golden reeds of Loch Cill Chriosd shimmer in the early spring sunshine.  The surface of the water reflects the leaden grey skies above.

The Ontology of the Photographic Moment - An Exploration of the Implications of Speculative Realism for Photographic Practice

Learn more about Alison's research

Annie Runkel

Woman standing in the clouds with a blue sky

The Boredom Project: Boredom, Art & Attention

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Calum Eccleston

A black and white photo of a man with his face covered in dark liquid walking next to a fence

Performing the Unseen. A practice-led exploration of intangible cultural memory through engagement with the Alastair MacLennan Performance Art Archive

Learn more about Calum's research

Cat Dunn

Love and Legacy poster

Spaces of Diaspora; Identity Otherness and Belonging in contemporary art of black women artists working in Britain

Learn more about Cat's research

Cate Newton

Six metre length of cotton fabric backed with black velvet and printed with A4 size pages of text, hanging from an interior concrete balcony.

Contemporary sculptural practice and philosophies of time: material, context and temporality

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Cathel de Lima Hutchison

Man in a life jacket on a sailing boat, with rugged scenery in the background.

Towards multispecies urbanism: Negotiating wildlife and biodiversity in design practice

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Catherine Hehir

A printing tool sitting on white paper

Printmaking in the expanded Field.

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Dan Drage

Up-close charred and blackened branches upright against a concrete wall.

Sacred Space, Place, Time: Extra-material realities in and through the material

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Désirée Coral Guerra

Annatto Fruit containing Annatto Seeds.    Black and White Photograph Desiree Coral-Guerra 2021

Invisible stories of plants: Seven chapters on botanical trajectories of appropriation and exchange, probing colonial historical narratives and hierarchies to interconnect relationships through their materiality.

Learn more about Désirée's research

Ewan Allinson

Stone carving of a hermit with antlers on their head set in a stone wall above a doorway

Working the Land, Knowing its Grain

Learn more about Ewan's research

Fatemeh Mahmoudnejad

Fatemeh Mahmoudnejad

Inclusivity in co-design planning processes in England and Scotland: Assessment and Enhancement

Learn more about Fatemeh's research

Federica Bruni

A woman resting her head on her hand

A Sense of Surreal and Magic in the Work of Contemporary Italian Female Artists

Learn more about Federica's research

Hamer Dodds

Detailed black and white drawing showing different plant life and cell type structures.

The sublime and the unimaginably unpresentable.

Learn more about Hamer's research

Johanna Roehr

Multiple neon coloured squares tiled together

Imagining Alternative AAC Futures Together: Can Artistic Literacy Help Neurotypical Communicators Integrate into a Neurodiverse World?

Learn more about Johanna's research

Karen-Ann Dicken

black and white vase

Integrating 3D printing and hand fabrication in contemporary craft practice

Learn more about Karen's research

Katie Hart Potapoff

A image of Katie Hart Potapoff's work

With an Attentiveness Towards Intimacy and Texture: Exploring a Sense of Land and Place Through Creative Practices

Learn more about Katie's research

Kunning Ding

Copper coloured ring made of e-waste

From E-waste to Jewellery: practice-based research on exploring creating emotionally durable jewellery with the metal recovered from electronic waste

Learn more about Kunning's research

Leena Nammari

It could be anywhere – cyanotype – 2022

A practice-based examination of the nature of Haneen: framing thoughts and representations on post-locational home and belonging.

Learn more about Leena's research

Louise Ritchie

metallic sheet

Hybrid States: A Practice-Led Enquiry Exploring The ‘Artificial’ Union Of Materials And Their Properties Within Contemporary Art Forms

Find out more about Louise's research

Lucy Smith

Spherical kinetic sculpture hanging by two threads.

Making the Conceptual Tangible: The Role of Art in the Understanding and Communication of Science.

Find out more about Lucy's research

Margaret Kerr

 Swirling light and dark abstract and seed shapes

Recovering what has been left behind: an interdisciplinary exploration of interconnected ways of knowing

Learn more about Margaret's research

Mark Vella

Exploring the impact of the Maltese National Planning Framework on the natural and built environment to achieve sustainable development.

Learn more about Mark's research

Merrily Hall

Headshot of knitted representation of artist's self using brightly coloured and textured wool. Image is displayed upside down.

An Investigation of Creative Practice as a Shield for Innate Sensitivity

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Morgan Wood

Artist portrait: close up a person wearing black leaning over the back of a chair

Towards an Ontology of Gendered Aesthetics: Surveying Topologies of Self and Other in Performance, Society and Media

Learn more about Morgan's research

Nicholas “Nikki” Ilic

an orange planet

On Representation in Medical Illustration

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Nuo Cheng

The comparison between orthographic perspective in Chinese and Bosch’s paintings.

Hieronymus Bosch and the Cavalier Perspective: The Transcultural East-West Bond

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Oludare Osore

Four images showing a small basic brick building in the countryside.

The Paradox of Sustainable Urban Development Demonstrated in the Prevalence of Informal Housing Development in Developing Countries: A Case of Abeokuta, Nigeria.

Learn more about Oludare's research

Poom Subpaiboonkit

In full PPE, Sang-Hun (Sean) Yu is acquiring the images of the fire scene to capture and reconstruct the scene in 3D.

The Cultural Appropriateness of Housing Design: Responding to Kon Muang Local Housing Culture with Earthquake-resilient Architecture in Chiang Rai Province, Thailand.

Learn more about Poom's research

Rui Bao

How contemporary jewellery construct cosplayer’s self-identity?

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Samantha Robinson

Inter-Species Ongoingness: Exploring Entanglement with Other-Than-Human ‘Pests’

Learn more about Samantha's research

Sascia Pellegrini

A person hidden in a translucent plastic sheet whose only arm is visible. A coloured window pane in the background. Focal and lens distortion.

Sense Amplification: a Phenomenology of Time

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Sang Hun Yu

In full PPE, Sang-Hun (Sean) Yu is acquiring the images of the fire scene to capture and reconstruct the scene in 3D.

Capturing, communicating and collaborating with Virtual Reality in forensic science

Learn more about Sang Hun's research

Sihao Fan

Nine square black-and-white photographs framed in nine white frames are hung on a white wall in a 3x3 array. The nine photographs contain three perspectives: far, medium and near the doors of three different churches.

An Exploration of the New Aesthetics of Archival Photography Through a Practice-Based Investigation of the Main Gates of Religious Architecture

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Susan Douglas-Scott

Past, Present, Future: Thoughts on Disability and Things

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Susie Johnston

Repurposed metal bucket, wire rope, dried paint. The bucket is hanging suspended above the paint.

Matters of entanglement: exploring making and metaphor as expansive ways of being and thinking.

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Titus Nnadozie Onuoha

Assessment of the Effectiveness and Sustainability of Urban Water Provision Practices in Owerri, Imo State Nigeria

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Wendy Bell

Molten glass unfolded into its own material agency, thereby becoming a wrinkled liquid form. Represented in photographic form

How Reality is Grounded not in what we Perceive but in what we do not Perceive.

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Xiaoyue (Eve) Zhang

A computer screen showing a simplistic design with different button functionalities.

Online Exhibition after the Covid-19 Pandemic —Audience Re-Engagement with Art Museums in China and the UK.

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Xiang Kevin Li

A Comparative Study on the Influence of Cultural Attitudes of Chinese and British Art & Design Higher Education Learners on the Learning Process

Learn more about Xiang Kevin's research

Yingying Ren

The process of embroidering Chinese characters by combining them into shapes according to their shape. A variety of embroidery techniques are used, including long and short stitch, heavy chain stitch, board chain stitch and stem stitch.

Revealing Meanings embedded within Craft Processes used in the Making of Textiles

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Yufei Gong

A red comic scene showing a person in PPE standing in a doorway, people are behind bars to the left and others are slumped over against a wall and desk in the room.

The Convergence of Visual Storytelling Conventions in Western and Eastern Comics, Film, Animation and Concept Design.

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Yuxin Li

The pictures include 3D printing modelling diagrams of the design process and the photo of two finished works. The modelling drawing is a perspective view of a half donut shape with a smooth exterior and a patterned interior; the finished work is a donut-shaped coloured silicone shell with a patterned surface wrapping a black circular display screen in the centre.

Investigating digital identity through taking digital as material within the jewellery design practice.

Learn more about Yuxin's research

Ziyue Tao

A corner of a nursing home bedroom with sunlight pouring in.

Designing Appropriately for Optimum Environments to Care for Chinese rural Dementia Residents 

Learn more about Ziyue's research