On Wednesday 5 of December CASIC organised an AHRC funded workshop on embodied digital research methodologies.

The workshop attracted over 30 PhD students from Keele, Lancaster, Loughborough, Derby and Sheffield Universities. 

The event was led by ILAS fellow, Anna Macdonald, from MMU who is an artist and scholar specialising in bringing creative embodied research methods to interdisciplinary research projects.  Following a presentation on co-production and digital technology by CASIC members, Prof. Mihaela Kelemen and Prof. Rajmil Fischman, the participants explored connections between bodies, research experiences and concepts as well as the potential for interactive technology to contribute to their own PhD research.

Central to the delivery was an artwork made by Anna in collaboration with digital composer Will Brearley (PhD student in Music Technology), 3D developers Karl Reid and Tom Pardoe (School of Pharmacy) and socio-legal scholar Prof. Marie-Andrée Jacob.

The participants commented on the innovative, disruptive and cathartic nature of the training and the need for more events of this sort to encourage PhD students to ask different sorts of questions by becoming more mindful of the body in the process of doing or writing up research.