Fully-funded
International PhD Studentship:
AutoMedia:
family life, interaction and media use in the car
Keywords: PhD studentship,
funded bursary, mobility research, mobile, technology, media use, social
science, ethnography, car travel, microsoft research
Closing date: July 1st, 2011.
Late applications received may
be considered for excellent candidates.
In cooperation with Microsoft
Research Cambridge, we invite applications (from India, China, Hong Kong, South
Africa, Brazil, Russia and the developing world) for an open PhD position that
is supported by the highly prestigious Dorothy
Hodgkin Postgraduate Award.
About the Project
Applications are invited for a fully
funded PhD Studentship to undertake research into social family interaction in
the car, in particular, exploring their use of digital and non-digital media to
engage with each other within this setting. The PhD research will
involve ethnographic and car-based video data collection to examine family life
and communication in the car and how families use and experience both
traditional forms of car-based navigation, learning and entertainment media, as
well as emerging forms of digital, wireless and location-sensitive technology.
You will therefore investigate media practices that take place in family cars
and document the varied domestic routines that take place during car journeys
in order to develop insights for the future design of family-oriented, car-based
media that are empirically grounded in examples of use.
Although the PhD will be primarily based around the data
collection and analysis of social interaction in the car, you will work closely
with the industrial co-supervisor and designers at Microsoft Research in
developing computer-mediated systems for use within vehicles, and there will be many opportunities to collaborate with
researchers from Microsoft Research at Cambridge.
About the host department:
You will be based in the Department
of Information Systems and Computing at Brunel University. This project will be
supervised by Dr. Mark Perry
(Brunel and Stockholm University) who leads the People and Interactivity
University Research Centre at Brunel, and will be co-supervised by Dr Eric
Laurier (Edinburgh University) and Dr Alex Taylor (Microsoft
Research).
The Award
The advertised position is offered
through a special arrangement with Microsoft Research and is part of the Dorothy
Hodgkin Postgraduate Awards. The position
is open to students from India, China, Hong Kong, South Africa, Brazil, Russia
and the developing world (see this list for a list of eligible nationalities). The award includes a generous tax-free maintenance
stipend (UK£13,590 annually) and the full cost of tuition fees for an international student (UK£12,600 annually), as well
as an annual travel grant to spend on travel and project related expenses. The
student will also receive a laptop and software.
Candidate specification
The ideal candidate for this
position will have or be expecting an excellent undergraduate degree in a
relevant discipline (such anthropology, sociology, geography, communications,
psychology, cognitive science, computer science, or a related discipline), and
should be demonstrably in the top 20% of his/her graduating class. They will
preferably hold a Masters degree in a specialist subject area (either orienting
towards the social sciences, covering topics such as ethnography,
ethnomethodology, or a design subject, such as critical design, interaction
design or human-computer interaction) or practical experience in these areas,
although a postgraduate degree is not a necessary requirement.
How to apply
Please submit to Mark Perry
(mark.perry@brunel.ac.uk) the following:
- your full CV
- transcripts of courses taken
- 2 strong academic references in
English
- 2 pages reviewing existing
research on mobility relevant to the PhD topic
- optionally a copy of an existing
piece of scholarly work
Shortlisted candidates will be
contacted within 10 days of the interview closing deadline.
Full details including further
information about the project and the department:
weblink: AutoMedia: family life, interaction and media use in the car studentship details
You are welcome to contact Dr Mark
Perry for further information or details (mark.perry@brunel.ac.uk).