PhD Studentship: Digital Twins: Post-Digital Books & the Library-Lab
Application Date: 29 September 2023
Location: Oxford, UK
Are you passionate about the potential of digital technology to revolutionise the way we interact with the physical world?
Oxford Brookes University invites applications for 4 funded Digital Twins Doctoral Studentships, representing a strategic investment into Digital Twins technology research and facilities. This exceptional opportunity allows you to research one of four exciting Digital Twins projects across our faculties, with the guidance and mentorship of leading scholars. We are seeking talented individuals from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to join our vibrant community of researchers committed to pushing the boundaries of knowledge and innovation.
Our objective is to equip you with the skills and expertise to become a leader within the field of Digital Twins. The university is investing in two groundbreaking buildings that will be equipped to facilitate Digital Twins research, offering large and complex Living Lab spaces. As a PhD student, you will have the unique opportunity to immerse yourself within these state-of-the-art spaces on campus, enriching your research experience.
The School of Arts Digital Twins studentship seeks to explore how a studentship might investigate the making of digital surrogates, or twins, of items in Oxford Brookes Library and Special Collections, particularly the Chris Fowler Artist Book collection, with an emphasis on how sensors may be deployed within the making of twinned/surrogate publications.
Surrogates, to scale copies of fragile or rare publications, are sometimes used in libraries and special collections as a way to enable researchers to access books and other objects, which are otherwise difficult to handle or access. This project aims to rethink these surrogates via the critical frameworks and material possibilities of post-digital publishing and artist books.
The project also seeks to research how we might create a satellite, or a digital sibling, of the library within the new building in Headington Hill, to host the surrogate publications produced within the studentship, reimagine the collections, catalyse engagement with them, and become a living laboratory for making post-digital publications – a hybrid Library-Lab space.
Oxford Brookes has a long history of training artists, craftspeople, and researchers in publishing skills, from its historic apprenticeships in letterpress to its renowned publishing courses today. This studentship would serve to build upon this legacy.
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