European Art Practice MA: Research areas

Many of the staff in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture are research active. This ensures they are in touch with the latest thinking and bring best practice to your studies.

Contemporary Art Research Centre

The recently established Contemporary Art Research Centre explores innovation in contemporary fine art, focusing on:

• art and social context;
• art and technology;
• art and epistemology; and
• art and materiality.

Visual and Material Culture Research Centre

This research centre focuses on the practice, histories, and theories of modern and contemporary visual, spatial and material culture. This encompasses:

• art, design, film and architectural practice;
• art and design criticism; and
• the history and theory of visual and material culture.

Since 1997, the group has organised a series of conferences and symposia in collaboration with major London museums and galleries.

Design Research Centre

The Design Research Centre  provides a creative environment for researchers engaging with the cultural, environmental and presentational contexts of design practice in its widest sense.  Research in this diverse area is developed through five interrelated areas:

• Design Innovation - focusing on the presentational contexts of contemporary design practice;
• Curating the Contemporary - focusing on new initiatives and perspectives on curating, including the interface between design, craft and fine art;
• Design for Environments - including design for wellbeing, health and micro-environments, as well as spatial, aesthetic and critical enquiries into building typologies and cultural analysis of urban and leisure environments;
• Design for Screen - focusing on interdisciplinary and practice-based enquiries into screen-based media; and
• Sustainability - multidisciplinary research into issues of sustainability across product and packaging design, recycling and materials innovation.

Student research

You may be able to publish any research you undertake on the Kingston University Research and Innovation Reports (KURIR) website. This site gives anyone associated with Kingston University the opportunity to publish articles, which will be permanently available to the academic community.