Creative Experimentations for Interdisciplinary Collaboration

This PhD studentship will allow the exploration of how socially engaged practices and methods drawn from a range of creative disciplines and social sciences may shape and reflect the collaborative co-production of research across the RENEW project. In the light of transdisciplinary innovations made in the area of participatory research, applications have been welcomed from a range of disciplinary backgrounds including science and technology studies, sociology, anthropology, human geography, creative writing, drama, art and design. The appointed student should ideally have direct experience of community-engagement work and feel confident and self-motivated to co-produce field-work research with the public and the RENEW research team. In return, the appointed student will have the opportunity to work with our world-class team of researchers and extensive range of partners to find new solutions to the biodiversity crisis as they develop their project.

The student will work as part of the X3 (Collaboration in Practice) team and study the RENEW research programme as it develops, helping RENEW to see itself and reflect on its processes. They will explore and document 'what's working' and engage wider research, conservation and local communities with their findings. The student will also explore the ways in which scientists and lay people alike respond creatively to 'biodiversity' (landscapes, ecosystems and the animals and plants living in them). Our understandings of changing environments can be intellectual, but are often also emotional, aesthetic and story-based, helping to make sense of the world around us. These understandings need to be incorporated into new knowledge, changing policies, professional practice and everyday habits, if we are to engage everyone in renewing biodiversity.

The student will help develop new methodologies for eliciting and recording broader thinking about biodiversity renewal alongside collaborative practices; and explore how that thinking changes over time. Their findings will form a feed-back loop that shapes the everyday routines and social interactions which make up the day-to-day research collaboration. Their techniques should not only record data but encourage creative action and reflection on the research processes and wider biodiversity crisis amongst RENEW participants. The student's work will help everyone involved to make sense of our collective work. The creative-critical balance of thei research outputs will be negotiated with the research team but may include a creative practices-as-research component alongside a critical thesis, according to the successful candidate's abilities and interests.