Current research projects

The Affects of Funding in the Arts (Dan Ashton)

Vlogging labour (Dan Ashton, with Karen Patel, Birmingham City University)

Digital Ideas and Audience Interaction (Dan Ashton, Seth Giddings, with Ìì·¢ÓéÀÖÆåÅÆ_Ìì·¢ÓéÀÖAPP-¹ÙÍø|ÏÂÔØ City Gallery)

Encyclopaedia of Gender, Media and Communication (Valentina Cardo, with Karen Ross, Newcastle)

Toy Theory: technology and imagination in play and design for play (Seth Giddings)
http://www.microethology.net/category/toy-theory/

The Playful Future: researching design for postdigital play (book project ¨C Seth Giddings)

Ludic Economies: journal special issue on rethinking the cultural economics of digital games (edited by Seth Giddings and Alison Harvey (Leicester))

The Postdigital Wunderkammer (with AMT research group, a space for and collection of immersive media technologies)

Research topics

The interplay between professional and everyday creative production:

• critical making
• vlogging and social media production
• digital game co-creation
• activist media
• precarious and affective labour
• popular and playful robotics

The impact of social media and participatory culture on established media and cultural industries:

• arts and cultural industries policies and practices
• work and labour in the creative and culture industries
• digital and networked transformations of news media and politics
• speculative design
• playful design and design for play
• transmedia systems
• the politics and possibilities of code and data (big and small) for creative and activist production

Theories of imagination and creativity in a postdigital media ecology:

• imaginative play in postdigital culture
• human and nonhuman creativity in design
• machinic creativity
• critiques of corporate creativity
• theories of speculative and critical design
• augmented and distributed imagination
• cultural-political economy in transformation

Innovative and experimental methods for researching industrial and everyday imagination and creativity:

• ethnography, ethology, action research, creative practice-led research
• pedagogy of prototyping and critical making
• theory and practice of creative and critical media/culture/design production