PhD Study : Art/Design and Queer Intersectionality (Sex, Race, Class)

Summary

We welcome PhD proposals from across the spectrum of art/design history, theory and practice that desire to reconsider visual and material culture from beyond the margins, from outside the mainstream, the heterosexual and cisgender.  Much recent art and design scholarship has actively sought the undoing of normative and hegemonic notions of culture, built on heterosexist, white-centred, classist and ablest systems of privilege through a dynamic application of queer, feminist, postcolonial and socio-economic theoretical frameworks.

From exhibitions such as the Smithsonian’s Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture (2010) and the Tate Gallery’s Queer British Art, 1861-1967 (2017) to Christopher Reed’s Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas (2011) and Catherine Lord and Richard Meyer’s Art and Queer Culture (2013), the intersectionality of art and design has been at the forefront of generating new bodies of knowledge about the cultural construction of identity in terms of sex, race and class.

‘Queer’ is understood as being and radical becoming, born of rejecting the heteronormative here and now (Esteban Muñoz, 2009). ‘Intersectionality’ recognises that the conditions of social and political life are shaped not just by gender, race, sexuality or class as single factors, but by how these and other axes of division work together simultaneously (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2016). The use of such theories and approaches in the study of visual and material culture can reveal much about the lives of minority individuals/communities/ populations, their exclusions and oppressions in the power networks of normativity, as well as their endurance, resistance and agency. In tandem with the theoretical frameworks we are interested in projects that centre on the possibilities that queer creative practices offer for telling stories, whether by the artist, designer, maker, or the writer, curator and historian, about what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick termed the ‘open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances, and resonances, lapses and excesses’ (Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1993) and about lives that are beyond, or a challenge to, normativity, that disrupt the canon, that are too complicated, or strange, failed, ambivalent, messy, slippery, nuanced, for the grasp of conventional enquiry.

We invite gate-crashers to art and design scholarship, who seek to expose its blindspots and omissions and open up new frontiers.  Recent exemplary queer intersectional scholarship includes the study of everything from painting and photography to fashion, interior design and architecture. The topic invites you to speak of how queer intersectionality may inform, emerge from, and be transformed by creative practices, including art/design practice as well as art/design writing. This topic builds on the legacy of feminist and queer scholarship at Ulster that has employed the intersectionality of feminist, queer, post-colonial and class theories in art and design.

Applicants may propose a full-text PhD, or art practice-led PhD with a written component.

Essential criteria

Applicants should hold, or expect to obtain, a First or Upper Second Class Honours Degree in a subject relevant to the proposed area of study.

We may also consider applications from those who hold equivalent qualifications, for example, a Lower Second Class Honours Degree plus a Master’s Degree with Distinction.

In exceptional circumstances, the University may consider a portfolio of evidence from applicants who have appropriate professional experience which is equivalent to the learning outcomes of an Honours degree in lieu of academic qualifications.

• Sound understanding of subject area as evidenced by a comprehensive research proposal
• A comprehensive and articulate personal statement

Desirable Criteria

If the University receives a large number of applicants for the project, the following desirable criteria may be applied to shortlist applicants for interview.

• Completion of Masters at a level equivalent to commendation or distinction at Ulster
• Experience using research methods or other approaches relevant to the subject domain
• Work experience relevant to the proposed project

Funding and eligibility

The University offers the following levels of support:

Vice Chancellors Research Studentship (VCRS)

The following scholarship options are available to applicants worldwide:

• Full Award: (full-time tuition fees + £19,000 (tbc))
• Part Award: (full-time tuition fees + £9,500)
• Fees Only Award: (full-time tuition fees)

These scholarships will cover full-time PhD tuition fees for three years (subject to satisfactory academic performance) and will provide a £900 per annum research training support grant (RTSG) to help support the PhD researcher.

Applicants who already hold a doctoral degree or who have been registered on a programme of research leading to the award of a doctoral degree on a full-time basis for more than one year (or part-time equivalent) are NOT eligible to apply for an award.

Please note: you will automatically be entered into the competition for the Full Award, unless you state otherwise in your application.

Department for the Economy (DFE)

The scholarship will cover tuition fees at the Home rate and a maintenance allowance of £19,000 (tbc) per annum for three years (subject to satisfactory academic performance).

This scholarship also comes with £900 per annum for three years as a research training support grant (RTSG) allocation to help support the PhD researcher.

• Candidates with pre-settled or settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, who also satisfy a three year residency requirement in the UK prior to the start of the course for which a Studentship is held MAY receive a Studentship covering fees and maintenance.
• Republic of Ireland (ROI) nationals who satisfy three years’ residency in the UK prior to the start of the course MAY receive a Studentship covering fees and maintenance (ROI nationals don’t need to have pre-settled or settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme to qualify).
• Other non-ROI EU applicants are ‘International’ are not eligible for this source of funding.
• Applicants who already hold a doctoral degree or who have been registered on a programme of research leading to the award of a doctoral degree on a full-time basis for more than one year (or part-time equivalent) are NOT eligible to apply for an award.

Due consideration should be given to financing your studies. Further information on cost of living