AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) studentship – Designing Interactions with Natural History: Exploring the Adoption of Emerging Technologies in Regional Museums

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) studentship with Portsmouth City Council

The University of Portsmouth and Portsmouth City Council are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative doctoral studentship from 1 October 2024 under the AHRC’s  Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships (CDP) scheme.

This research project will explore the adoption, appropriateness, and expressiveness of creative technologies to augment Cumberland House Natural History Museum’s collections and their value to attract new audiences. Using co-design, research-though-design, and mixed-method evaluation of audience experience, the project will discuss future opportunities for post-digital (regional) museums, help the cultural sector strive to adopt emerging technologies and leverage opportunities for digital literacy in heritage staff. The project will generate guidelines and enhance understanding of future-focused challenges within digital heritage, facilitating the creation of sustainable experiences that investigate the expressiveness of interactive technologies to engage audiences and tell stories about local museums’ natural history collections.

This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Argenis Ramirez Gomez , Dr Claire Bailey-Ross , Christine Taylor (Curator of Natural History) and Violet Nicholls (Assistant Curator) and you will be expected to spend time at both the University of Portsmouth and Portsmouth City Council’s Cumberland House Natural History Museum, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK. 

Project Overview 

Despite museums’ long-standing commitment to impact, participation and engagement, evolving digital consumption patterns have changed museum audiences. These changes, coupled with ongoing public sector funding cuts, have put immense pressure on museums to justify their value and relevance to society. Consequently, museum professionals are compelled to explore new ways to engage audiences. Unlike larger national museums with dedicated digital teams, this project uniquely addresses the constraints faced by local museums, aiming to enhance their digital capabilities through accessible guidelines and broaden audience access, reach, and engagement. The proposed PhD project focuses on understanding and addressing the challenges faced by regional institutions in the post-digital age, emphasising the need to build museums’ digital capacity and capability. Drawing from a sustained collaboration between Cumberland House Natural History Museum and the University of Portsmouth’s School of Creative Technologies, the project aims to explore the adoption, appropriateness, and expressiveness of creative technologies. Specifically, it seeks to augment Cumberland House Natural History Museum’s collections (>90% hidden in the museum’s store) to attract new and existing diverse audiences and enrich community participation and engagement – a priority for the museum. Through co-design research methods, the project aims to illuminate future opportunities for post-digital local museums, guiding the cultural sector in adopting emerging technologies and fostering digital literacy among museum staff and volunteers.

The primary objective is to develop guidelines for adopting sustainable digital heritage experiences and enhance digital literacy within regional museums. This involves exploring the expressive potential of creative technologies to engage audiences with museum collections and empowering museum staff with technology-driven innovation that adds value to the collection. This framework will foster an ecosystem in which local museums can thrive, exemplified through co-creation with the museum’s community (e.g., visitors, local schools, and creative volunteers). The project addresses how to co-create sustainable technology-based experiences that meet audience and museum needs to help museums’ digital transformation. Action-based audience engagement evaluation will provide evidence-based insights, crucial for effectively reshaping museums for the future. 

About the role

The successful doctoral candidate will be registered in the Digital and Creative Technologies postgraduate research degree programme and will be able to shape the direction of the project according to their background expertise and development needs.

The candidate will be expected to employ a comprehensive hands-on approach and integrate co-creation, and mixed-method audience experience evaluation through the creation of interactive experiences. The PhD candidate will have privileged access to Cumberland House Natural History Museum’s collection and the University of Portsmouth’s Centre for Creative and Immersive eXtended Reality (CCIXR) to leverage emerging creative technologies to develop interactive media experiences for the collection. 

The PhD candidate will focus on creating frameworks and guidelines, promoting co-creation as a method to empower the museum workforce with digital literacy, agency, and independence in adopting, creating, and maintaining new technology-focused experiences, thereby attracting diverse audiences. The resulting guidelines are expected to be designed to be replicable and adaptable, providing value to Cumberland House Museum, other regional museums and the broader sector.

  Eligibility

• This studentship is open to both Home and International/EU applicants.
• To be classed as a home student, candidates must meet the following criteria:
• Be a UK National (meeting residency requirements), or
• Have settled status, or
• Have pre-settled status (meeting residency requirements), or
• Have indefinite leave to remain or enter

   Further guidance can be found here. 

• International students are eligible to receive the full award for maintenance as are home students.

 As a collaborative award, students will be expected to spend time at both the University and the Cumberland House Natural History Museum / Portsmouth City Council Museums

Applicants must satisfy the standard UKRI eligibility criteria. 

Entry requirements

Applicants should ideally have or expect to receive a relevant Master-level qualification in a relevant subject or be able to demonstrate equivalent experience in a professional setting. Relevant disciplines include Creative Technology, Creative Computing, Interaction Design, Digital Humanities, Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Science, but we also welcome candidates with experience in the cultural and heritage sector. You’ll need English language proficiency at a minimum of IELTS band 6.5 with no component score below 6.0.

We are looking for a creative individual with a playful mindset and (some) technical development and prototyping knowledge or willingness to learn. Applicants must be able to demonstrate an interest in the cultural sector and potential and enthusiasm for developing skills more widely in related areas.

How to apply

You’re welcome to contact Dr Argenis Ramirez Gomez (argenis.ramirez-gomez@port.ac.uk) and Dr Claire Bailey-Ross (claire.bailey-ross@port.ac.uk) for an informal discussion about this opportunity.

To apply please use our online application form quoting project code SASS9160524. You’re also required to submit a research statement/proposal tailored to the research as outlined above discussing your view on how to address the project.