MPhil/PhD Codex at University of Plymouth

Course Details

CODEX is a full-time practice-driven interdisciplinary PhD programme in the emergent fields of art, design, and technology. It is an internationally networked postgraduate research community under the governance of the University of Plymouth in collaboration with collaborating institutions. It builds on world-class research excellence of the School of Art, Design and Architecture in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the University Doctoral College.

The full-time PhD consists of an 18-month residency period in the UK followed by a mobility period in a collaborating institution.

CODEX focuses on art and design practices that engage with social, cultural, economic, and environmental challenges and the new behaviours generated through the catalyst of technological innovation.

Sourced from an international community of designers and artists CODEX provides a critical, experimental and provocative environment for exploring material and immaterial influence on potential futures.

CODEX actively seeks to establish art and design practices that cultivate new transcultural, transdisciplinary perspectives on a complex world. It does this by nurturing innovation through practice-driven research and a synthesis of conventional and emergent methodologies

The collaborative research framework cultivates a critical engagement with emergent art and design forms, practices and behaviours. It fosters a beneficial entanglement and reciprocity with other disciplines, communities and ecologies. In an attempt to unpick the easy rhetoric that surrounds ‘cross’, ‘inter’ and ‘trans’ disciplinarity it explores the difficulties of these marriages of inconvenience.

The impact of CODEX reaches far beyond the comfort zone of the creative and cultural industries to actively engage with science and technology agendas. It encourages entrepreneurial aspirations and supports industrial, commercial and community engagements through work placements, collaborations and residencies.

This full-time doctoral programme is suitable for people who have a particular research question or topic in mind, and wish to explore this through independent study in order to produce an original contribution to the subject. If you aspire to a research career this is the most appropriate research degree to undertake.

You will be guided by a small supervisory team of academic experts under the direction of a Director of Studies. Even if you already have a masters degree, you will normally be registered as a ‘MPhil/PhD’ candidate and may apply to transfer to ‘PhD’ status around 10–22 months after registration, based on your progress to date. 

You will be expected to fully engage with skills development and training and to present your research in a range of scholarly contexts.

Your PhD will be assessed via submission of either a written thesis (approximately 80,000 words), or one that combines critical writing with artistic, creative and/or professional practice, and a viva voce (an oral examination).

For full details of what doing a PhD entails at the University of Plymouth, please visit our Postgraduate Research Degrees pages.