PhD Studentship: Reimagining just and low-carbon immersive futures

This studentship is based in the College of Arts, Technology and Environment.

Immersive technologies are transforming creative and cultural industries worldwide, but are deeply entangled with extractive economies, carbon-intensive digital infrastructures, and systems of power that disproportionately affect lands, cultures and communities in the Global South.

As the sector grows, it is characterised by resource-heavy hardware, energy-intensive software and infrastructures, and rapid, high-waste cycles of obsolescence. Alongside research into how immersive technologies can support pro-environmental behaviours or enhance awareness of the climate crisis, there is a need for impactful research reimagining how immersive technology practice, production and distribution methods, and supply chains can contribute to decarbonisation and environmental justice. Further, this PhD offers the cultural sector ways to grapple with the complex realities of what it means to live at a time of potential societal, ecological and climate collapse.

This PhD will explore what a just, low-carbon, and pluralistic immersive ecosystem could be in practice; critically examining how immersive technologies and their supply chains are implicated in resource extraction, high energy consumption, and digital colonialism, and the political tensions upholding the status quo. It will investigate how immersive productions, practitioners, cultural organisations or policymakers can create sustainable pathways towards low-carbon, regenerative and post-extractive ways of working that restore, rather than deplete, cultural and ecological systems.

As the lead UK institution behind sector development for Immersive Arts, and a partner in a UK network for sustainable digital research infrastructure, UWE Bristol is uniquely positioned to support this research. Depending on a candidate’s chosen area of interest, this studentship will connect to a network of cultural partners, practitioners and policymakers, ensuring real-world impact and knowledge exchange across the evolving immersive sector.

Candidates are invited to develop their own research question(s) and UWE Bristol will build a supervisory team in response to their interests.

The successful candidate will be based in the Digital Cultures Research Centre, hosted within the Pervasive Media Studios, Watershed, on UWE Bristol’s City Campus, and will benefit from a range of support services that the university offers to our Doctoral Researchers.

We are particularly interested in practice-led research, and welcome both traditional, research-based PhD proposals, and those involving developing a standalone, creative body of work, that might iteratively adopt low carbon and just practices.

For more information about this studentship please contact Associate Professor Erinma Ochu at erinma.ochu@uwe.ac.uk

Alternatively, DCRC Director Tom Abba at tom.abba@uwe.ac.uk

Funding

The studentship is available from 1 October 2026 for a period of three years, subject to satisfactory progress and includes a tax-exempt stipend, which is currently £20,780 (2025/26) per annum.

In addition, full-time tuition fees will be covered for up to three years.

How to apply

Please submit your application online. When prompted use the reference number 2627-OCT-CATE06.

Application deadline

The closing date for applications is 22 May 2026.

Supporting documentation

You will need to upload your research proposal, all your degree certificates and transcripts and a recognised English language qualification is required.

You will need to provide details of two referees as part of your application.

Interview dateshttps://www.uwe.ac.uk/courses/applying/international-applications/english-language-requirements

It is expected that interviews will take place in June. If you have not heard from us by July, we thank you for your application but on this occasion you have not been successful.

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