PhD.

25 Apr

In October 2023 I started a PhD. at the University of Sussex.

My working title is Loss, Hope, and Collective Imagined Futures: Art(ist) led initiatives and their role in moving communities toward collective imagined futures, through a journey of intangible loss and rediscovering hope in post-industrial towns and cities.

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.” — Václav Havel

In post-industrial towns and cities where their past economic activity and current social framework have contributed to global inequity, exploitation of local populations, colonialism, and direct climate injustices, what is the role artists and designers have in creating and developing conditions that grow imagined better futures, can this work create a sense of possibility in a time of uncertainty.

I’ve been posting some of the social reading I’ve been doing on my Instagram. Some people have asked me for a reading list. As the most viewed page on this site is the reading list I did for a short course in Fashion Psychology, I thought I’d post some of my reading here.

These are in no particular order, and I may add more as I go.

Hospicing Modernity Vanessa Machado de Oliveira

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675703/hospicing-modernity-by-vanessa-machado-de-oliveira/

Active Hope Joanna Macey Chris Johnstone

https://www.waterstones.com/book/active-hope-revised/joanna-macy/chris-johnstone/9781608687107

Hope in the Dark Rebecca Solnit

https://canongate.co.uk/books/46-hope-in-the-dark-untold-histories-wild-possibilities/

Not Too Late Rebecca Solnit

https://www.waterstones.com/book/not-too-late/rebecca-solnit/thelma-young-lutunatabua/9781642598971

Ambiguous Loss Pauline Boss

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674003811

https://www.ambiguousloss.com/