Fellowship Opportunity: Design for Heritage and Community

The Design Department at Manchester School of Art is renowned for its international and world-class research in Design for Health and Wellbeing, Design Innovation, Community and Heritage and Making and Materiality. Our research and teaching builds on an extensive heritage and connection to the creative industries which has enabled us to become one of the leading providers of design education nationally, and our research and education are consistently highly ranked in subject league tables. Through this, we provide unique opportunities for collaborative co-creation across our global network of partners.

The work of the Department includes research that:

• Explores the practices of design and craft in the context of emergent material science, technologies and ethical frameworks.
• Aims to develop community belonging and sense of place.
• Develops new ways of presenting and preserving marginalised histories, perspectives and issues within communities and cultural institutions.
• Experiments with new forms of print, digital and hybrid media—books, catalogues, virtual environments—in support of community and heritage institution programmes.

Two key strands to our work includes nascent research on designing for countercultural heritage—which explores how major cultural institutions pay attention to marginal, decolonial, planetary perspectives—and design for cohesion which centres on the role of design in the production of cultural heritage in urban environments.  

About the role: 

• To undertake world-leading and internationally excellent research using latest and innovative methodologies, as relevant in your area of research. 

• To prepare, present and publish research outputs through the appropriate forums. 

• To develop ideas for generating income to ensure the continued success and growth of research portfolio.  

• To disseminate findings of research widely to further the institution’s standing in the HE and research community and strengthen the impact of the research.

About the candidate: 

You will be an expert in any of the practices within the group, in addition to having knowledge and experience in one of the areas of heritage futures, collaborative and participatory design, or social design. With expertise of designing for and with communities or audiences, you will help address questions of decoloniality and re-indigeneity in collective and social design practice and pedagogy.

Requirements: 

• Doctoral level qualification in a related research area. 

• Possess breadth or depth of specialist knowledge and demonstrate potential for research independence.

• Excellent track record of relevant research outputs. 

• Significant research experience in the chosen field of research, which should include where appropriate: 
  • leading the work of a team, co-ordinating effort and resources to meet objectives 
  • developing partnerships with internal and external agencies 
  • preparing funding proposals and applications to external bodies 
  • using initiative, creativity and judgement to develop appropriate approaches to research 
  • synthesising complex data from different sources and communicating findings via written reports and articles 
  • presenting at national and/or international research meetings 
  • supervising student work and providing appropriate support and feedback. 

• Experience of managing and monitoring performance of research projects in multi-disciplinary teams.

• Ability to manage projects involving academic institutions and funding bodies. 

Please refer to the Job Description & Person Specification for a full list of essential & desirable criteria. 

Academic Contact: Prof Philip Ely (p.ely@mmu.ac.uk) to discuss the fellowship opportunity in detail. 

Closing Date: 29 May 2024 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us on researchfellowships@mmu.ac.uk  

To return to the main fellowship page, click here  

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