HYBRID: TRANSDISCIPLINARY: TRANSFORMATIVE:

This document brings together materials produced for and during a PhD by Designstudy and workshop day held at Leeds College of Art on May 14th 2015. This day was dedicated to exploring multiple possibilities of innovatively disseminating practice based design research. Twenty-nine participants contributed to the day with a 5 minute presentation of one instance of dissemination of their research, reflecting on what they did, what worked and what did not and why. These presentations, and the practices at their core, where the basis for our collective exploration. This journal has been produced on May 14th 2015 as an experiment in how knowledge generated through an event can be disseminated instantly - in a form that allows for unpolished and fresh thoughts to be circulated. The Instant Journals pages consist of each participants biography, their research topic and a question that they were looking to explore on the day. This is followed by a page where they had one hour at the end of the day to document a response to this original question

HYBRID: TRANSDISCIPLINARY: TRANSFORMATIVE: An instance of travelling in practice-led research: Talk in 5 minutes

HYBRID: TRANSDISCIPLINARY: TRANSFORMATIVE An instance of travelling in practice-led research: Talk in 5 minutes Hybrid practices with (or without) digital or interactive technologies can transport us to unexpected new spaces and places; On our nomadic practitioner journeys we transform: move, change and coevolve through thinking and experimenting with tools, creating objects, artefacts, experiences, new ways or methods, languages, and production paradigms. This five minute reflexive talk; explores how becoming more open and receptive to co-creative approaches of this nature can positively enhance, shift, transform and transcend; us as practitioners, our approaches, and methods and the disciplines themselves now and in the future. I have collaborated with colleagues from within School of Art, Design & Architecture and in School of Music, Media and Humanities and external partners from outside the University on various phases of an evolving AHRC/EPSRC research project focused on the 3D Environments, acoustics modelling, animation and music of prehistory since 2009. This practice led trans-disciplinary experimental immersive acoustic research is concerned with understanding and exploring the ritual praxis of Neolithic makers of Stonehenge. The multiplexity of unanticipated experiences and un-expected data we sourced, created, developed and disseminated together, is shared in this talk at PhD by Design. During the progressive phases of this practice-led transdisciplinary research, we, as practitioners: artists, designers, theorists, makers, musicians, historians, curators.., collectively gained a deeper understanding into how humans: then and now, and the technologies we make, can generate a unique transformative contribution to the dissolving of physical, disciplinary and cultural boundaries

Do the shuffle: Exploring reasons for music listening through shuffled play

Adults listen to music for an average of 18 hours a week (with some people reaching more than double that). With rapidly changing technology, music collections have become overwhelmingly digital ushering in changes in listening habits, especially when it comes to listening on personal devices. By using interactive visualizations, descriptive analysis and thematic analysis, this project aims to explore why people download and listen to music and which aspects of the music listening experience are prioritized when people talk about tracks on their device. Using a newly developed data collection method, Shuffled Play, 397 participants answered open-ended and closed research questions through a short online questionnaire after shuffling their music library and playing two pieces as prompts for reflections. The findings of this study highlight that when talking about tracks on their personal devices, people prioritise characterizing them using sound and musical features and associating them with the informational context around them (artist, album, and genre) over their emotional responses to them. The results also highlight that people listen to and download music because they like it-a straightforward but important observation that is sometimes glossed over in previous research. These findings have implications for future work in understanding music, its uses and its functions in peoples' everyday lives

Back to the Future: The Uses of Television in the Digital Age

This article considers some of the present-day issues, challenges and possibilities facing television broadcasting via a critical examination of the recently published Goldsmiths report on the future of public service television in the twenty-first century. Focusing mainly on UK terrestrial broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5), the article summarises and expands on the report's key findings and recommendations, particularly in relation to questions concerning digitalisation, content, diversity, quality, marketisation, funding and national and regional heritage. The article argues that, despite the rise of the Internet and the proliferation of digital platforms, television viewing remains a common source of information and entertainment and is characterised by meaningful continuities. Additionally, the article outlines the vitally important role played by David Puttnam, chair of the Goldsmiths inquiry, in defending public service television through his active engagement with relevant parliamentary committees and as a widely respected media professional. Finally, the article reflects on the continuing relevance of the 1962 Pilkington Report on Broadcasting, which was similarly commissioned in order to evaluate the purposes of television. In so doing, the article suggests that Pilkington's criticisms of creeping commercialism and the ensuing regulatory proposals still represent a cogent engagement with the idea of public service broadcasting as a primary facilitator of deliberative democracy

The touch test: attitudes towards and experiences of touch 2020

The Touch Test was commissioned by Wellcome Collection and BBC Radio 4 and research carried out by Goldsmiths, University of London. This survey investigated attitudes towards and experiences of touch - a relatively understudied domain compared with other sensory modalities. A large participant sample was recruited, comprising a broad demographic across age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, and employment status. Our key research questions addressed particular gaps in existing knowledge, and included 1) What are people's attitudes and experiences towards touch and how do they vary across different groups? 2) How does touch relate to health and wellbeing throughout adulthood? 3) What is the relationship between touch and the type, size, closeness, and frequency of contacts in a respondent’s social network? 4) What is the topography of social touch (where is it / is it not appropriate to touch someone) and how does this vary between demographic groups? 5) How does touch relate to sleep, and how might this relationship contribute to health and wellbeing? 6) How does touch contribute to medical experiences (e.g. willingness to have interactions with healthcare professionals; perceptions of outcomes of medical treatments)? 7) How open are we to using technology as a tool to provide or augment our tactile experiences (e.g. for medical treatments; for long-distance relationships)

Re-emerging pasts: forums for truth-telling in contemporary Argentina and Chile, 2015-2016

Data collection of interviews and photographs captured at key sites of memory for the political violence that took place in the 1970s and 1980s in Argentina and Chile. The data capture impressions at sites where the events of the last dictatorships of Argentina and Chile are presented, also called 'forums for telling'. Ten semi-structured qualitative interviews were held with lawyers, museum directors, artists, the President of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology team and two survivors of the Chacabuco detention centre in Chile. A collection of 1231 documentary photographs showing key 'sites of memory' and museums in Argentina and Chile that were visited for this project. This research project studies how - by what processes, according to what criteria, and subject to what kinds of verification? - truths emerge about the political violence that took place in the 1970s and 1980s in Argentina and Chile. Although that period of violence is now 'past', many facets of it are still unresolved. Beyond the legal mechanisms that continue to unearth truths about the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-83) and the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (1973-1990), there are several sites at which these unresolved issues emerge for debate and verification. There is a need to address the unresolved and still controversial nature of many questions as the presentation of the story of what happened becomes a focus of new memorial spaces and Memory museums, as well as at other sites where truths are tested, including where biological identities are tested via DNA or where human or material remains require forensic testing. The research will take place at a range of diverse sites that we call 'forums for telling'. Its premise is that truths about the past are of different kinds because they have to pass through different processes of hypothesising, 'testing' and reflection before they are affirmed and allowed to emerge as true. Thus the production of truth at a museum of memory differs both in process and in terms of the truths it seeks and can affirm, from the production of truth by the law courts, or by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team's attempts to establish identities through the testing of human remains or DNA. The research concerns how the different forums and spaces approach this task differently, how they involve different material and human witnesses, different procedures and place different constraints on the objects of their interrogations. In studying these processes we will ask: What candidates emerge to tell the truth about the past? Which truths are allowed to emerge at the different sites? How are they understood as relevant to the forum that debates their status? What 'tests' must they pass in order to attain their status as true? How are emergent truths presented, arranged and mediated for consumption? How is their status challenged? The importance of these questions becomes apparent when one considers the pedagogic dimensions of the activities at stake. We will highlight the pedagogic and inter-generational dimension. What do the different forums understand as the relation between the production of truth and the presentation or curation of the story of the past as a wider societal imperative? How do they agree to present their work domestically and internationally, including digitally? How do they seek to overcome the dangers of making a spectacle of the past, or else using it within a strategic instrumentalisation that insists that listening repeatedly to horrors of past violence will inoculate us from ever repeating the past wrongs? The research will use observation, interviews and documentary data gathered from significant sites chosen for their potential to speak to these interests. In Argentina, we will visit the largest and most notorious of the ex-clandestine centres for detention, torture and extermination (ex-ccdte), the ESMA in Buenos Aires, now an official Site for Memory, and where debates about the use of the space have raged for several years, but where new changes to the use and especially the pedagogic aspects of the site are presently coming to fruition. Additionally we will visit two ex-ccdte sites further afield, in Cordoba and Tucuman. In Chile, we will also visit ex-centres of detention in Santiago (Londres 38, Villa Grimaldi) and one further afield in Chacabuca in the north. In each country we will also be visiting important newly opened Museums of Memory (in Santiago and Rosario). To complement these, we will observe and interview members of the important Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, as well as following key legal cases that are on-going.</p

Archives of Violence: Case Studies from South America, Qualitative Semi-structured Interviews with Workers and Ex-workers of Three Important Archives, 2018-2020

The research project sought to understand the histories and development of the three chosen archives in South America, focussing in particular on the challenges they had faced and how they had overcome them. Its purpose was not only to record these histories but also to provide recommendations for those setting up archives elsewhere both within and outside Latin America. To this end, the team contacted the archives and requested interviews with members of the archives. We were able to secure interviews with workers currently working at the archives as well as those who had previously worked there (this was especially important in the case of the Colombian Centro Nacional de Memoria Historica, where there had been several recent changes in personnel). We also interviewed persons who were not workers in the archives but that worked in other archives, museums or communities in these countries with an interest in how human rights violations were being registered. Through these interviews one is able to understand the histories of the different histories of these archives, the ways in which they approach their work and the challenges that each has and continues to face.This data arises from the British Academy-funded research project ‘Documentality & Display: Archiving and Curating Past Violence in South America’. The project drew upon the notion of 'documentality' in the philosophy of Maurizio Ferraris, by which the social order is understood to be founded upon the ways in which human lives are inscribed, both materially and imaginatively, to study key centres of post-conflict documentation in South America. The project asked: How should those effected by state violence and armed conflict record and collect their experiences to lend them effectively to future justice processes and future use? How are questions of inclusiveness, categorisation and material delimitations dealt with by established and emerging archives and documentation centres? As societies develop, they need also to attend to how past experience is recorded and displayed. In part this relates to how criminal prosecutions take place, for archives and documentation centres become important for fact checking. They are also important sources of cultural understanding, providing materials for cultural awareness and modes of representation for future generations to understand the past. That is, how the traces and records of past violence are ordered, and how they are displayed, will involve decisions that construct meanings and structure debates. Documentation centres and archives are crucial sites of socio-cultural reproduction in this regard that operate as keepers of the traces of violence and as participants as curators, influencing our imagination and our understanding. The research was conducted in Argentina, Chile and Colombia in 2018-2020, and was carried out by a team of four international researchers, led by Professor Vikki Bell. The focus was on three important archives, one in each country, that have documented human rights abuses. In the cases of Argentina and Chile, these archives concern the abuses that occurred immediately before and during military dictatorships that took place in those countries (in Argentina between 1976 and 1983; in Chile between 1973 and 1990). In the case of Colombia, the archive is an institution that has attempted to address the on-going violence of the armed conflict. The three archives are as follows: i) in Chile, the FUNVISOL archive, in Santiago (the archive of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad). ii) in Argentina, Memoria Abierta, in Buenos Aires. iii) in Colombia, the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, in Bogotá. The research aims were: first, to share the stories of the origins of these archives, which are distinct in each case, and to offer these histories as ways of understanding the dynamics at stake within and across the three countries; secondly, to explore how the archives have been put to use, with an emphasis on how they have been and continue to be used by legal institutions, as well as their educational and artistic uses; thirdly, to offer recommendations for those who may be considering or in the process of setting up comparable institutions in other countries. To facilitate this, interviewees were asked directly about the challenges that their work had faced, and where relevant, how these challenges had been overcome. As a sociological project, we mostly employed face to face qualitative interviews with individuals and sometimes small groups. The interviews were semi-structured and in-depth, lasting an average of two hours. In total, 31 individuals were interviewed in 16 interviews. The team also engaged in library-based research, including at the archives themselves. Additionally, there were research trips to other institutions, and the team interviewed other individuals beyond the archives themselves, to give context and to deepen our understanding. The project studied how documents of violence are constituted, collected and preserved in archives and documentation centres, the decision-making that takes place at those sites - and its problems - and how these centres are being utilised as ways of creating engagement with the violence of the past in ways that are culturally important. These involve legal processes, that recognise past crimes and establish the rule of law as well as socio-cultural processes that seek forms of sustainable peace through the understanding that make possible, that is, through understanding what present and future societies inherit from the experience of conflict.</p

BrExpats transcripts: France and Spain case studies 2017-19

This data collection includes transcripts of interviews conducted as part of the research project BrExpats: freedom of movement, citizenship and Brexit in the lives of Britons living in the European Union. These transcripts report verbatim on in-depth interviews, directed conversations and group discussions conducted as part of case studies conducted in France and Spain. These case studies were designed to respond to the research question: How will Brexit be experienced by Britons resident in EU member states, across a range of national and local settings; how will they re-evaluate their lives and citizenship, re- negotiate their identities, (re)position themselves in relation to shifting political realities of Europe, navigate and manage the changing structural conditions that shape the possibilities for their continued residence and/or repatriations?What are the implications of Brexit for Britain's estimated 2 million citizens (Home Office 2016) resident in other European member states? Will this signal a rise in return migration and with what consequences for welfare and healthcare in the UK? If they stay put, what challenges will Brexit and its impact on Britain's expatiates present for local migration governance and regulation in EU destinations, and for support services for Britons abroad? Finally, what are the consequences for how the British in Europe experience and understand their migration, their everyday lives, citizenship and identities? BrExpats places such concerns at the heart of its enquiries, examining what Brexit - as it unfolds - entails for Britons resident, part- or full-time, in those EU countries hosting the large numbers of Britons. It is organised around three inter-related research questions: (a) What will be the consequences of Brexit for the political rights, social and financial entitlements and citizenship of such populations; how will the consequences be understood, communicated, managed and mediated by institutional actors in Britain and Europe as they unfold? (b) How is Brexit experienced by Britons resident in Europe, across a range of national and local settings; in what ways will this cause them they re-evaluate their lives and citizenship, re-negotiate their identities, (re)position themselves in relation to shifting political realities of Europe, navigate and manage the changing structural conditions that shape the possibilities for their continued residence and/or repatriations? (c) When and in what ways do these populations feature within the Brexit negotiations, and how are their experiences in turn shaped by the ways they are represented in policy, media and decision-making? To respond to these questions, BrExpats will foreground a sociological understanding of Brexit and its impacts on Britons resident in Europe, building on and contributing to three fields of social scientific knowledge at their intersections: (1) European citizenship and identities; (2) migration and migrant lives; and (3) British migration. It is designed to capture the ongoing interaction between the institutions, laws, policies, discourses and norms that frame Brexit as a process, and the activities and actions of these Britons. It synthesises past research by the PI and Senior Research Fellow (O'Reilly) on British populations in Europe (see Benson 2011, O'Reilly 2000), employing a project team including consultants from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and a dedicated research assistant, to developing new empirical research combining (a) expert interviews with institutional actors in Britain, the European Commission, and European Member States with responsibilities for these British population; (b) in-depth case studies in France and Spain-where the largest number of Britons reside-paired with longitudinal analysis and supplemented with citizens' panels comprised of Britons resident in Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece and Cyprus, countries hosting the largest populations of Britons after France and Spain (Dennison and Pardijs 2016); and (c) interpretive analysis of texts, documents, discourse, media and policy debates, and decision making. Academic outputs will include 2 conference papers and 4 journal articles. The project is designed around an continuous commitment to engagement activity and communicating research outcomes to practitioners, civil society organisations and policy makers. Dissemination activities include (a) a series of podcasts; (b) key trends reports; (c) a research brief; (d) policy roundtable; (e) articles in English language media in France and Spain, Migration Information Source, the Conversation and Open Democracy; (f) regularly maintained website and bespoke social media strategy; (h) pop-up exhibition and catalogue; &amp; (i) a co-authored book, written to appeal to a broad audience.</p