Postgraduate Community
CPC brings together media theorists, practitioners, programmers, activists and artists to generate research that moves away from prescriptive solution-based interventions and toward more pluralistic ways of being, thinking and making. It does so in order to reimagine 21st century postdigital societies and their cultural institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, museums, etc.) at a local, national and planetary level.
CPC has a vibrant PGR community working on a wide range of topics across five thematic research areas: Post- publishing; Postdigital intimacies; Ludic Design; Art, Space and the City; and AI and Algorithmic Cultures.
CPC Postgraduate Team
PGR students are usually allocated two supervisors and a Director of Studies for academic support. Additionally, CPC has three members of staff whose role is dedicated to supporting PGR students. Professor Mel Jordan, Dr Phaedra Shaunbaum, and Dr Lindsay Balfour will help applicants with the admission process as well as promote a collegial and inclusive community and environment for new and returning PGRs.
Professor Mel Jordan
Professor of Art and the Public Sphere at the CPC
Mel Jordan is Professor of Art and the Public Sphere. She is the leader of the research strand ArtSpaceCity, in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures. From 2016 to 2019, she was head of Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art, UK. In 2018, Jordan (along with Andy Hewitt) formed the Partisan Social Club, before which she worked in the collective Freee (with Dave Beech and Andy Hewitt). Her research is concerned with the potential of art as a political tool through its role as a form of opinion formation in the public domain. As part of the Partisan Social Club, she has exhibited at Coventry Biennial; Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall, London; and Edinburgh Printmakers. Recent journal articles include ‘Toppling Statues, Affective Publics and the Lessons of Black Lives Matter Movement’, (2021); ‘Depoliticization, participation and social art practice: On the function of social art practice for politicization’, (2022); ‘On practising politicized practice: What do we learn?’, (2022). She is PI for the Spatial Practices in Art and ArChitecture for Empathetic EXchange (SPACEX RISE) project. This is an ongoing project funded by the European Union’s HORIZON 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) project number 872561 (https://www.spacex-rise.org/). She is currently working on a book entitled ‘Spatial Practices and the Urban Commons’.
Visit Mel's Pure ProfileDr Phaedra Shanbaum
Assistant Professor of Digital Media
Phaedra Shanbaum is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures at Coventry University, exploring the relationship between the body and technology in contemporary digital media art installations and performances. Her research interests lie at the intersection of media and cultural theory, HCI and fine-art. She is the author of Interfaces and Interactive New Media Installations (Routledge, 2019) and Aesthetics, Gender and Disability in New Media Art (Routledge, Forthcoming).
Visit Phaedra's Pure ProfileDr Lindsay Balfour
Assistant Professor
Lindsay Balfour leads the Postdigital Intimacies research cluster and manages Community and Environment initiatives for Postgraduate Researchers. Her own work draws on the philosophical concept of hospitality to consider the relationship between humans and machines and employs an intersectional feminist and cultural studies perspective to look at digital intimacies. Her current research explores access and inclusion in the FemTech industry, and the efficacy of digital interventions for gender-based violence. This work offers wider benefits concerning the global health of women, such as those outlined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals regarding Women and Girls, and in particular targets focusing on sexual and reproductive health. She is the author of Hospitality in a Time of Terror (2017), The Digital Future of Hospitality (2023), and FemTech: Intersectional Interventions in Women’s Digital Health (2023).
Visit Lindsay's Pure ProfileResearchers interested in undertaking a PGR with any of the research areas in CPC should contact Phaedra Shanbaum for initial enquires. If you already know a CPC academic you would like to work with, please contact them directly to discuss your project.
Image credit: Social Montage: Speak-Act-Print-Publish! Documentation (slogan-box mash-up), Partisan Social Club by Mel Jordan. Project at Edinburgh Printmakers, 2019. With thanks to Kate Davis, Lorenzo Robinson, Madeleine Wood, Jack Whitelock. Photograph Andy Hewitt
