The AHRC Northumbria-Sunderland Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT)
The AHRC Northumbria-Sunderland Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) consortium is led by Northumbria University with the University of Sunderland and partners BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and the National Glass Centre, Sunderland. Launched in 2014, the CDT is a cross-disciplinary collaboration in art & design providing match-funded PhD studentships in the areas of Fine Arts, Visual and Material Cultures, Glass and Ceramics, Digital Art / Curation and Design. The Consortium emerged as a direct result of the AHRC's collaborative Block Grant Partnership (BGP1) award made jointly to the Universities of Northumbria and Sunderland in 2009.
Research training within the CDT is focussed on providing the next generation of interdisciplinary practitioner-researchers with the opportunity to develop research skills in a dynamic research culture with supervisory support from world-leading academics and practitioners in the field of art & design. Delivering innovative approaches to the integration of professional and academic rigour in the development, production and dissemination of practice-led and applied research underpins all of our training. Drawing upon the extensive local, national and global research networks developed by Northumbria and Sunderland universities and their partners the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and National Glass Centre, Sunderland, CDT students are embedded in a vibrant and outward facing research community.
The CDT is committed to exploring and exploiting conceptual and methodological connections across and beyond art and design. The integration of academic and professional subject-specific skills is at the core of the CDT’s multi-disciplinary critical research environment. Aligned with the rich range of art & design research clusters within the CDT, students pursue practice-based research projects, supported by excellent studio and workshop facilities as well as dynamic discursive opportunities initiated by both universities and their partners.
The Experimental Studio, housed within the BxNU Institute, Northumbria University’s partnership with BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, is the locus for a public programme of exhibitions, interdisciplinary discussions and events organised in collaboration with artists, curators, students and other experimental thinkers and practitioners. The University of Sunderland has a similar public-facing configuration at the National Glass Centre, which has an increasingly important function in regional cultural tourism, as well as offering a unique research facility which includes a focus on the public enjoyment and understanding of glass, artist production, the facilitation of industry led research and postgraduate study, led by Sunderland's Institute of International Research in Glass (IIRG).
For general academic enquiries regarding the Centre please contact:
- David Campbell: david.campbell@northumbria.ac.uk
- Beryl Graham (for Sunderland): beryl.graham@sunderland.ac.uk
Or for administrative enquiries please contact: rn.northumbria-sunderland-cdt@northumbria.ac.uk
