Communication research consists of staff and student projects across the full range of contemporary print, digital, audiovisual, graphic and illustration media. Communications are explored in the widest social and cultural contexts, and a philosophical approach is used to understand the role of communication theory and practice in culture and society, with research being seen as a conduit for ideas rather than medium specific. We encourage innovative and experimental ideas that test the limits of our major disciplines and their increasingly hybrid outputs. The disciplines include digital media, photography, film, video, text, paint, sound, wood-block type, print, environment, digitisation, visualisation, navigation, digital media, social media, networking, sound and spatial awareness. The research undertaken within the School includes both multidisciplinary and multimedia facets and a wide range of technical and computer skills, thinking through making, awareness of contexts, audiences, users and the public. The School provides a vibrant and supportive working community with increasing contact with industry, the public and external funders.

Research-active staff contribute to new media practice through publication, exhibition and curating their own and colleagues’ work. Research students – often professionals engaged in teaching, writing and exhibition – contribute to the research culture by progressing their own topics, and by engaging collectively in critical seminars. We encourage researchers to associate with the overall postgraduate studies programme, and to take their work and ideas into the wider world through conferences, galleries, and in print, digital and other media. The research skills, methodologies and methods, developed initially through the research methods course, incorporates narrative, storytelling, new knowledge, analysis observation, and specific methods such as case studies.

A new development is the prestigious Creative Economy Knowledge Exchange Hub, in association with Lancaster and Newcastle Universities and funded by the AHRC. The Royal College of Art’s role is led by Professor Neville Brody. The Hub will collaborate with the BBC, Microsoft, MediaCityUK, FutureEverything, Tate Liverpool, Opera North, NESTA, Manchester Digital, Arts Council England and over 30 small- and medium-sized companies working in the sector, such as Stardotstar, B3 Media and Mudlark. It responds to and enhances digital space and interactive content online, and explores new forms of connectivity. The project will include six PhD research scholarships at the RCA to develop innovative ideas and practice within the framework of Visual Communication, and will be based in a new Digital Research Lab. The six areas of this project are experience, participation, connectivity, narrative, identity and personalisation.

Research in Visual Communication is organised around the major research interests of staff and students by asking questions and finding new solutions in diverse areas of communications practice and theory. Our multidisciplinary themes are:

• Questions of Visual Design: exploring typography, visual imaging and exhibition strategies in a range of practices, e.g. studies of arts and visual cultures that cut across traditional subject areas, from the design innovations of the avant-garde to new modes of web-based visualisation and to the critical role of branding in society.
• Questions of Media: projects that explore the interface and overlap between analogue and digital technologies, and look at traditional craft media and processes together with digital developments. They investigate emergent hybrid processes, with a particular focus on print and online publishing, moving image and sound.
• Questions of Narrative: developing the innovative use of word and image to explain or entertain, built on our roots in animation, illustration and graphics. New ways of communicating ideas or telling stories are explored through the relationship between image and text.

Research in Animation is organised thematically around clusters of interest of staff and students.

Animation and the Real: Documentary Animation – twenty-first century animation practice is increasingly hybrid in form and aesthetics. As new uses for animated imagery emerge, and the expertise of animation artists widens, this pervasiveness creates new challenges and opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations. One area of convergence is the documentary form, where the penetration of animation has been very visible. Animation is in other disciplines preoccupied with representing the real (scientific research, therapy, education), giving opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations, and the access of animators to independent long-format production.

Projects within animation are ‘Landscape, Environment and Culture’, exploring the natural and artificial environments as a source of meaning and identity; projects exploring landscape imagery and sound in the context of memory, history and community; ‘Analogue / Digital’, exploring the interface and overlap between analogue and digital technologies, and ways in which traditional ‘craft’ media and processes are alongside digital technology and ‘hybrid’ processes e.g. single-frame manipulation, drawing with light, and sound; ‘New Narratives’ are projects that employ the innovative use of word and image to explain or entertain; and ‘Moving Image’ – film and video projects, typified by experimental self-authored pieces for cinemas or exhibitions.

communication-research@rca.ac.uk