Research degrees with the London School of Film, Media and Design
Research specialisms
The London School of Film, Media and Design offers a PhD within the areas of expertise of the School’s teaching staff. The combination of theoretical and practical research specialisms in the department means we are able and happy to support PhD work.
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Current research areas
We are currently seeking applications for PhDs in the following broad fields and areas:
- adaptation studies, film studies, genre studies, genre theory, popular fiction
- creative writing, screenwriting
- filmmaking, film theory, film and philosophy, screen studies
- gender, technology and work
- media arts, art and design history, cultural history, communication design, design and visual literacies
- media history and theory, media archaeology, gallery and museum studies
- media studies, media transformations, branding, public relations, television, news and journalism
- modern literature, literary theory, literature and philosophy
- photography history and theory, media and photography practice, photography and philosophy, literature and photography
- rethinking the image
Below are some of the areas covered by the PhD research specialisms of our teaching staff:
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Adaptation and popular British genre fiction
This PhD project with Professor Jeremy Strong will take as its subject a range of British written and screen texts from the overlapping genres of adventure and the thriller, including novels (and their adaptations) by Haggard, Buchan, Hope, Childers, Charteris, Household, Ambler, Fleming, 'Sapper' and Greene.
Its object is to understand and frame these works in a national/historical context – spanning the late peak of Empire to its fall – and in terms of reading tastes, filmmaking practices and film-going choices. Methodologically, a variety of approaches could be brought to bear, and the eventual choice (or combination) will be in part determined by the skillset of the successful applicant. However, likely avenues include:
- archival study of relevant publishing and production materials
- analysis of contemporary reviews, criticism, and popular responses – including book sales data and box office information
- application of Adaptation Studies’ theoretical approaches to the corpus
- typological analysis of the evolving characteristics of the British hero
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The intermediality of art cinema
Despite a broad turn towards intermediality and attention to questions of ‘convergence’ in cinema, screen and media studies, modern and contemporary art cinemas still largely tend to be considered as more or less autonomous entities, whether as the body of work of a given director or auteur, the product of a nation, movement or tendency (as with, lately, so-called ‘slow cinema’).
If other forms or arts are invoked, these tend to be forms such as literature, or more traditional fine art disciplines such as painting or sculpture. Proposals are invited for research projects (working with Dr Matilde Nardelli and Professor Garin Dowd) seeking to explore modern or contemporary art cinema’s often overlooked status and circulation as itself a mass medium (albeit with a smaller, more selected yield), and/or its relation to, and circulation through, mass media forms such as photography, television, print and online media – which may in fact often even constitute the main forms of a given film’s visibility and cultural circulation.
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Media transformations
This is an open call for a number of PhD students interested in examining transformations in media, particularly the relationship between media content and present and ongoing technological innovation and transformation.
This could include:
- public relations management of 'extreme' events across media (Dr Sumaya Alnahed)
- the intersections of geopolitical change with changes in the media landscape (such as the shifting relationship between social media and 'mainstream' media) (Dr Sumaya Alnahed)
- the adaptation and reworking of content and narratives across diverse media platforms (Professor Jeremy Strong, Professor Garin Dowd)
- changing representations and experiences of space and place in the context of globalised media (Professor Garin Dowd)
- the reinvention of cinema in the context of new distribution and production technologies
- transformations in sexual practices and pornography in emergent media contexts (Professor Helen Hester)
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Modern European cinema, landscape and environmental awareness
This project with Dr Matilde Nardelli will entail research into the role of modern (or post-1945) European cinema in the emergence of so-called modern environmental consciousness and ecological thinking in the second half of the last century, in the wake of rapid industrialisation, consumer booms and processes of de- and recolonisation. In this period cinema has operated as an agent of testimony to the catastrophic ravages of the Second World War and as a mode of interrogating the nuclear threat during the Cold War era. With its capacity to document the material world and its ability to ‘preserve’ that world either in its given status (untarnished or otherwise) or in its progressive degradation (or amelioration), the cinematographic image has functioned, sometimes with and often without the intentionality of the filmmaker(s), as a record of a changing world. Post 1945-cinema, moreover, has operated in parallel with the very globalisation in which it is inescapably implicated, while simultaneously it (globalisation) is also is the primary agential force in environmental disaster and ecological degradation.
The project will develop a critical perspective and propose a new theoretical framework to contribute to this debate. It will combine a broad range of examples or focus on particular directors, or on a national or regionally identified cinema and will propose a framework conducive to its chosen remit.
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Practice, theory and philosophy in film, photographic and screen arts
This is a call for a number of PhD students interested in examining points of intersection between film and screen theory and film and artist film practices.
Projects could focus on the moving image in all or some aspects of film studies, filmmaking, film theory, screen studies and gallery/museum studies (Dr Matilde Nardelli).
Specific focus might be brought to bear on some of the following:
- thought and theorisation as immanent to cinema and/or screen arts (Professor Garin Dowd)
- genealogies of film practice as theory
- intersections of filmmaking and theory in specific directors (Professor Jeremy Strong, Professor Garin Dowd, Dr Matilde Nardelli, Professor Helen Hester)
- film and photographic philosophical approaches to practices of theorisation (Professor Garin Dowd, Dr Junko Theresa Mikuriya)
- institutional critique in gallery-installed moving image art works (Dr Matilde Nardelli)
The combination of theoretical and practical research specialisms in the School means we are able and happy to support either written or practice-based PhD work, which could include film or exhibition practice.
Proposals in other areas of research are welcomed including advertising, graphic communication, public relations and museum studies; media and the Middle East; photography history and theory, new media and new media theory, critical and cultural theory; technologies, sex and gender; media archaeology; adaptation (novel-to-film and other forms of inter-medial and trans-medial traffic); genre studies and genre theory.
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Promotional cultures
This call for MPhil/PhD applications relates to an ongoing research initiative at the University of West London, led by Associate Professor Dennis Olsen, exploring the representation of older adults and ageing in promotional communications. The overarching objective is to facilitate meaningful change within the creative industries regarding age diversity, equity and inclusion, thus shaping future promotional cultures. Research produced as part of this initiative so far has focused on the UK, Germany and Australia.
Applications are invited which offer fresh insight into this socio-politically relevant topic via:
- intercultural/cross-country media investigations in under-researched countries (any rationale in terms of country selection should be informed by, eg, socio-demographic factors and accessibility);
- collaborative approaches in order to include creators (eg communications agencies, brands, casting agencies) and/or regulators (eg professional bodies) and/or older adults themselves as part of the discourse in the UK.
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Rethinking the image
This is an open call for PhD students interested in working in the broad fields of interest of several researchers in the school (Professor Garin Dowd, Dr Matilde Nardelli, Dr Junko Theresa Mikuriya, Professor Helen Hester).
This call relates to the interrelations between the still and moving image, live and recorded images, sound and the screen, the idea of photography that has shaped its technological development, and how theoretical debates in photography or in relation to images more broadly can be reappraised in the current social, cultural and technological context.
This call also relates to film spectatorship studies in fiction and documentary, accommodating approaches as diverse as cognitive theory, phenomenology and affect theory in the pursuit of exploring the link between film text, audience experience and viewing context.
The combination of theoretical and practical research specialisms in the department means we are able and happy to support either written or practice-based PhD work, including in film, television, photography and media arts.
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Samuel Beckett in the 21st century
What are the main currents to have emerged and how do these relate to previous approaches to his work? In the recent responses of several commentators to trends within the humanities centring on such concepts as the anthropocene and the posthuman, is one in the presence of theoretical innovation or the conceptual repackaging of earlier models of thinking about Beckett?
Is the upsurge of work with an archival foundation indicative of an enriching engagement with sources or is it suggestive of a detrimental disengagement from the work itself? Applications are invited which offer fresh insights into some or all of the debates listed above.
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Literature, Literary Theory, Creative Writing
The School has supervisory expertise in a range of fields of modern literature. We invite applications focused on the work of individual authors in the modern period but have concentrations of staff research interests in several general areas.
Among these are literary theory and philosophy (Garin Dowd), adaptation (Jeremy Strong), image and text studies (Theresa Mikuriya), literature of the fin-de-siècle (Marcus Nicholls), modernism (Garin Dowd), the nineteenth-century novel (Jeremy Strong), surrealism and writing (Theresa Mikuriya) and literature and class (Jonathon Crewe).
The School also welcomes applications for practice-based and practice-led projects in creative writing and screenwriting (Jeremy Strong, Jonathon Crewe).
Please consult the profiles via the links above and contact one or more of the potential supervisors for an informal discussion if you are interested in making an application.
PhD research degrees
Studying for a PhD enables you to develop an area of specialism that will give you an edge, whether you are planning to work in industry, or to develop expertise to teach in academia.
London School of Film, Media and Design offers the PhD courses below:
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PhD Media (West London Campus)
West London Campus
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PhD Creative Writing (West London Campus)
West London Campus
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PhD Film Studies (West London Campus)
West London Campus
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PhD English Literature (West London Campus)
West London Campus
Current PhD research degree projects
Below are the PhD research degree projects currently being studied by our postgraduate students.
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The adaptation of history and place investigated through the writing of a historical novel set against the construction of the nineteenth century Prussian fortress Ehrenbreitstein (1817-1837)
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Branding: The skill of communicating moral values
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Conspiracy and cartography: The mapping impulse of conspiracy theories
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A critical investigation into the relationship between modernity, utopianism and post-work theory
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A fractured life: A novel, and a thesis on history-as-adaptation
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From the ectomorph to the male waif: A cultural history of male thinness
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The haunting persistence of the witch: Figurations of witchcraft and historiography
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An investigation of martial arts representation in British TV, film and advertising from the 1960s-1990s
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New articulations of time: Cinema and digital media culture
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The platform imagination
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Playing against the camera: Tracing the emergence, labour and potential of a feminised photographing body
Research student
Research supervisor/s
Project synopsis
‘Playing against the camera’ seeks to trace an alternative history of photography, reinscribed as the emergence of a biotechnological assemblage – a ‘photographing body’.
Within the field of photography theory, the body of the photographer has been consistently ignored or understudied. This enquiry turns to new materialist, object oriented and technofeminist philosophies to explore fresh perspectives on the bodies that photograph.
Rummaging archives of technology, media, art and activism, the project aims to identify the technologies, behaviours and affects that assembled to produce feminised photographing bodies.‘Playing against the camera’ is situated within a feminist philosophy of technology and will investigate the relationship between the emergence of feminised photographing body and the development of emancipatory politics.
Biography
Rowan Lear is an artist, writer and researcher, with interests in art ecologies, histories of photography, technofeminism, networked culture, media archaeology, feminist theory and political philosophy. Previous study includes MA Photography: Contemporary Dialogues (Swansea College of Art, 2013) and BA (Hons) Photography and Film (Edinburgh Napier University, 2010).
Rowan is co-director of the artist-led festival Bristol Biennial, and has worked on a number of public art projects and major exhibitions in the UK, for organisations including Arnolfini, In Between Time, Hand in Glove and Situations.
Rowan has written widely on art and photographic practice, including criticism, catalogue essays and exhibition texts, and develops new work through residencies and collaborations. She has also lectured in art, photography and visual culture in and outside of universities and art institutions. -
Unsuitable Objects: Disrupting photorealism in the digital 3D scan through art practice
Research student
- Florian Stephens
Research supervisor/s
- Dr Matilde Nardelli
- Second supervisor (external): Dr Seth Giddings, Winchester School of Art
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"This is my story": The role of emotions in online feminist activism in Brazil
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Translation as interlingual adaptation: Writing a mystery novel in English and Spanish through creative practice-led research
Research student
- Isabel Del Rio Salvador
Research supervisor/s
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Utopia Beyond Progress: Ernst Bloch and the imaginary of possible emancipatory politics
Awarded PhD research degrees
Below are the research projects and degrees awarded each year.
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Research degrees awarded in 2023/24
Celebrity chefs and the acquisition of taste in contemporary British society
- PhD awarded to Ariane Lengyel, September 2023
- Principal supervisor: Professor Jeremy Strong
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Research degrees awarded in 2022/23
Turpin: The Notorious
- PhD awarded to Alastair Hagger
- Principal supervisors: Professor Jeremy Strong, Dr Jonathon Crewe
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Research degrees awarded in 2020/2021
“We are a service class”: A workers' enquiry into the class composition of service commodity production during the unreal interregnum
- PhD awarded to Callum Cant, December 2020
- Principal supervisor: Professor Helen Hester
Your utopia, my dystopia: an enquiry into the narrative and dramatic potentialities of Plato’s republic as realised in the form of a dystopian novel
- MPhil awarded to Marguerite Nolan, December 2020
- Principal supervisor: Professor Jeremy Strong
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Research degrees awarded in 2019/2020
They call it love: wages of housework and emotional reproduction
- PhD awarded to Alva Gotby, October 2019
- Principal supervisor: Professor Helen Hester
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Research degrees awarded in 2018/2019
Examining adaptation studies in and through the decadent aesthetics of J-K Huysmans’ a rebours
- PhD awarded to Marcus Nicholls, February 2019
- Principal supervisor: Professor Jeremy Strong
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Research degrees awarded in 2017/2018
(Visual) representations of old age and older people in (print) advertising: Histories of scholarship for and a contemporary cross-cultural analysis of, Germany and Australia
- PhD awarded to Dennis Otrebski, April 2017
- Principal supervisor: Professor Jeremy Strong
Hagging the image: Challenging the role of photographic images in contemporary narratives of ageing femaleness within Anglo-American culture
- PhD awarded to Sukey Parnell, April 2018
- Principal supervisor: Dr Mark Little
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Research degrees awarded in 2016/2017
The Power of possessions: An investigation into the ontology of personal possessions in the context of death and bereavement through the practice of still-life photography
- PhD awarded to Carol Hudson, January 2017
- Principal supervisor: Professor Jeremy Strong
Applying for a PhD
If you are considering applying for a PhD, the first step is to contact a supervisor in a relevant research area - contact emails are listed against projects above.
Find out more about the funding we offer, the application process and other frequently asked questions.
If you have any questions please contact us by email: postgraduate.admissions@uwl.ac.uk
Find out more
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Research Centres and Groups
Find out about our multi-disciplinary areas of expertise, PhD research, and teaching.
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Research impact
Learn how our PhD research has helped communities locally, nationally and internationally.
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The Graduate School
If you are interested in studying for a PhD or Professional Doctorate, the Graduate School is here to support your research.