21st May 2008. Postgraduate Workshop

Panel's Interests

JOHN WOOD - Key Speaker

John Wood is Professor of Design at Goldsmiths, where he leads the MA Design Futures programme and is Principal Investigator in the AHRC 'Synergy within Metadesign' project. He is also joint editor (with Julia Lockheart) of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice. His recent book 'Design for Micro-Utopias' (Ashgate, 2007) argues that we need to move beyond the confused, and contradictory discourse of 'environmental sustainability' because it fails to articulate the breadth and depth of our ecological plight. Instead, he advocates a concerted quest for what Buckminster Fuller called a 'synergy of synergies' (1975). This is unlikely to be achieved by any single disciplinary focus, or methodology. It calls for non-hierarcical (e.g. holarchic - Koestler, 1969) teams of highly creative and entrepreneurial designers, and other experts, representing different cognitive learning types, and viewpoints.

SUE THOMAS
I am interested in transliteracy as a tool for mediating different kinds of literacy across disciplines and media. Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. See http://www.transliteracy.com

Sue Thomas is Professor of New Media in the Institute of Creative Technologies (IOCT) and the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Her most recent book is the non-fiction travelogue of cyberspace 'Hello World: travels in virtuality' (2004)

Her research interests include transliteracy, collaborative media, and psychogeography. She is currently writing The Wild Surmise, a study of the relationships between cyberspace and the natural world. http://www.suethomas.net

MAGGIE O’NEILL
My inter-disciplinary research career over the last two decades has developed at the inter-sections of cultural, critical and feminist theory; renewed methodologies for socio-cultural research – including visual methodologies (what I call ethno-mimesis); and praxis through participatory action research (PAR) as an outcome of scholarly activity. I have a longstanding interest and engagement in collaborating with artists through ethnographic research (specifically biographical narrative research) as well as through participatory action research and participatory arts. Two key strands of research activity have been undertaken focusing upon prostitution/sex work/ the sex industry and the asylum-migration nexus.

For more information -see:
'Transnational Refugees: The Transformative Role of Art?'
'Making the Connections:arts migration and DIaspora regional network' - http://www.makingtheconnections.info
'Safety Soap Box' - http://www.safetysoapbox.co.uk'
Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies Global network' - http://www.humiliationstudies.org  http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/staff/oneill.html

BOB BROCKLEHURST
I will talk about the Polish project we are working on at present with some of our undergrad students. It looks at the relation between politics and memory through Polish performance techniques. We will have just returned from a workshop in Wroclaw (April) and I will have video/stills to show.

As a practicing artist my work always focuses on visual symbolism; looking into ritual objects, appendages and environments and the effects they can have upon textual/political interpretations of bodies in performance. I am currently working on two ‘memory performance’ projects set in Poland and Bosnia Herzegovina. Both are filmed performances dealing with how to show/represent traumatic experience in present-day Europe. I am also conducting research into the links between performance and politics amongst Yucatec Mayan communities, Mexico. My most recent publication is The Virtual Cabinet of Dr. Freud in Performance Research (Routledge, Jan 2008) looking at potential links between psychoanalysis and computer-generated objects in performance.

ANNIE CATTRELL
My practice as a fine artist is at times informed by working with specialists in neuroscience, meteorology, engineering, psychiatry and the history of science etc. This cross-disciplinary approach has enabled me to learn about cutting edge research and in depth information in these fields. I am particularly interested in the parallels that can be drawn within these approaches in both art and science.

Annie Cattrell is currently Senior Research Fellow in Sculpture at De Montfort University.
She is currently undertaking a number of commissions including at the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail; The Bio-chemistry Department at Oxford University and at Glaxo Smith Klein Beechams scan centre at Hammersmith Hospital in London. She has undertaken residencies at Camden Arts Centre; The Royal Institution of Great Britain; The Royal Edinburgh Hospital; ACE Helen Chadwick Fellowship at Oxford University and at the British School at Rome. www.anniecattrell.com

For further information please contact
Nikki Counley N.Counley@lboro.ac.uk
Hema Naran hnaran@dmu.ac.uk