Overview

We are the only Information Studies subject area in the UK that brings together the practices and collections of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) with the theory and practice of digital humanities. Our research culture reflects that: it is collaborative, genuinely interdisciplinary, and unusually willing to let one question span several fields at once.

Rapid technological change, and the growing volume and complexity of digital information, pose significant challenges to how we use and curate information both individually and collectively. Concepts such as identity, memory, authenticity, trust, transparency, accountability, and preservation are central to information studies in a digital era, and demand fresh theoretical approaches that connect theory with practice, people with information, and technology with humanity.

Our work explores media in the broadest sense:

• two-dimensional forms such as text, image, and digitised documents
• three-dimensional forms such as objects, spaces, and immersive environments
• sound and music, once notated or recorded and then encoded as data in their own right

We interrogate these objects rather than simply describing them, asking how the media through which people encounter information shape the societies that produce and inherit it, and what that means for what we choose, and are able, to preserve as heritage.

Our research spans three inter-related areas: Cultural Heritage, Digital Humanities, and Information Management & Analysis. 

Cultural Heritage

• digitisation, curation, and evaluation of heritage collections and digital assets
• visitor studies and museum and heritage learning and engagement
• critical heritage studies, museology, and the legacies of empire and colonialism in museums and heritage sites
• 3D digitisation and virtual or immersive reconstruction of cultural heritage collections
• information-based, media, and net art, and the history and theory of digital and new media art
• book, library, and collections history
• media archaeology and the material culture of information technologies

Digital Humanities

• digital libraries, legal deposit, and interpretation of collections as data
• handwritten text recognition and AI-enabled processing of historical documents
• manuscript and textual encoding, and the digital study of early modern print culture
• the computational study of music once it has been notated and encoded
• interpretation of digital editions and archives relating to exploration, colonial, and religious history
• research infrastructures and digital methods training in the humanities
• media theory and critical approaches to digital and social media, examining the platforms and infrastructures that shape contemporary digital culture

Information Management & Analysis

• digital curation and preservation practice and pedagogy
• information ethics, law, and policy, including intellectual freedom, neutrality, privacy, and digital citizenship
• archives, records, and information management, including records and accountability
• misinformation, information behaviour, and the theory of how conspiracy narratives circulate across social media
• critical data and platform studies, including locative and geospatial media
• artificial intelligence in information systems, digital forensics, and the auditing of generative AI

Few of our researchers sit neatly inside just one these areas. A study of Victorian manuscripts might draw as much on archival theory as on digital humanities methods; a project auditing AI in a museum setting sits as much in information ethics as in cultural heritage practice. If your own research interests don't fit a conventional single-discipline PhD, that's not a barrier here. It's the norm.

• Our staff
• Staff research interests search

Learn more about our staff, explore their research profiles and read some of their publications. Getting familiar with a supervisor's own work before you apply is good practice for a PhD, and there is no better way to see whether your interests genuinely overlap with ours.

Study options

PhD

• Duration: 3 years full-time; 5 years part-time
• Thesis length: 70,000-100,000 words, including references, bibliography and appendices (other than documentary appendices).

A Doctor of Philosophy may be awarded to a student whose thesis is an original work making a significant contribution to knowledge in, or understanding of, a field of study and normally containing material worthy of publication.

MLitt (Research)

• Duration: 2 years full-time; 3 years part-time
• Thesis length: 40,000-70,000 words (including references, bibliography and appendices).

Our Degree of Master of Letters (Research) requires you to undertake a postgraduate course of special study and research that represents a distinct contribution to knowledge.

MPhil (Research)

• Duration: 1 year full-time; 2 years part-time
• Thesis length: 30,000-40,000 words (including references and bibliography).

A Master of Philosophy (Research) requires you to undertake a postgraduate course of special study and research that represents a distinct contribution to knowledge.

MRes

• Duration: 1 year full-time; 2 years part-time
• Thesis length: 20,000-30,000 words (including references, bibliography and appendices).

Our Master of Research includes both taught and research elements. You will be required to undertake 60 to 80 credits worth of taught courses as well as independent study which represents some contribution to knowledge.

Distance Learning

It may be possible to undertake a postgraduate research degree (with the exception of MRes) in the College of Arts and Humanities by distance learning. If you wish to explore this option, you should discuss it initially with your proposed supervisor.

• Postgraduate research by distance learning