PhD Studentship - Signs of the Sea: Coastal Heritage and Creative Practice

Supervisor(s)

• Professor Rina Arya and Justin Burn University of Hull
• Dr Anna Fitzer University of Hull
• Dr Kevin Corstorphine University of Hull

Enquiries email: livingwww@hull.ac.uk

Subject areas

• Languages, Literature & Culture
• Physical & Environmental Sciences

Project description

Coastal towns and cities are liminal spaces, defined by the threshold between land and sea and shaped by the interplay between natural and built environments. In northern England, maritime centres such as Hull, Scarborough, and Blackpool have long been defined by their relationship with water. Once vibrant centres of tourism, trade, and industry, many of these places now face social and environmental challenges including economic decline, coastal erosion, and the effects of climate change. Yet their visual and narrative cultures remain powerful expressions of resilience, belonging, and adaptation.

This practice-based PhD explores how creative communication, through design, film, writing, and heritage practice, can document and reimagine the identities of coastal communities in times of transformation. By examining the visual, material, and narrative Signs of the Sea, the project investigates how everyday design and storytelling traditions articulate the ways people live with, remember, and imagine bodies of water.

Drawing on methodologies from graphic design, film, and environmental humanities, the research will combine fieldwork, archival study, and creative production to investigate how coastal culture is visually and narratively expressed. The project will analyse artefacts such as shopfront typography, fairground art, hand-painted signage, photography, filmic imagery, and local storytelling to understand how they construct community identity and memory. These objects and narratives will reveal how proximity to the sea shapes aesthetic practices, local economies, and collective imagination.

A core aim is to work collaboratively with local and regional partners, such as museums, archives, heritage organisations, and community groups, to co-create new forms of coastal storytelling. The researcher will engage communities through participatory workshops, oral history, and design-based research to collect and reinterpret materials that reflect their relationship with water. These participatory methods will ensure the project is both academically rigorous and socially grounded, situating creative practice as a tool for engagement, reflection, and resilience.

Ultimately, Signs of the Sea is about more than the preservation of coastal heritage; it is about imagining futures in which culture and environment are intertwined. By engaging with the textural environment, typographies, and coastal life stories, the researcher will create a body of work that not only reflects but also participates in the living culture of the sea. 

 Through this, the project demonstrates how creative practice can help coastal communities live well with water: building resilience, sustaining identity, and shaping new narratives of belonging at the edge of land and sea.

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