The Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture has a well-established and internationally renowned research culture that encourages and supports high quality, innovative research through practice, history and theory. This rich spectrum encompasses the critical practices of fine artists, curators and cultural commentators and historians, alongside that of designers, film makers, architects, town planners and surveyors, all of whom have extensive professional, industrial and commercial links. Our aim is to foster a dynamic and stimulating environment that realises and supports individual and collaborative research projects. This is achieved through an exchange of ideas and practices within and across the disciplines, directly benefitting the wider academic community as well as industry, business and the public.
The Faculty’s research activities were recognised as being world leading and of international excellence in the 2008 national Research Assessment Exercise that rates the quality of all research in UK universities. This assessment has meant the University’s research grant from the Higher Education Funding Body for England has nearly tripled this year. Central to these achievements are our five established research centres that provide a strong infrastructure and supportive community for staff and student research. Our postgraduate students are an important part of this community, which also includes tutors and supervisors, visiting professors and research fellows.
The strength of the Faculty’s research has been recognised through the award of a number of prestigious grants from national research councils, including the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Significant funding has also been awarded by the private and the public sector, including the former Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Arts Council, the British Academy, the British Council, and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). These competitively won grants have enabled ambitious research projects such as the Creative Resources project on recycled materials in design; research into colour, design and the environment; the Dora Gordine project based at Dorich House Museum; and critical developments in individual and collaborative practice in fine art, design and the built environment.
More recently, Kingston University, in partnership with St George’s, University of London, has established a new centre for design and innovation with a particular focus on benefitting the health and cultural sectors. Situated at Knights Park, ‘Innoversity’ brings together designers, researchers and engineers who work together to come up with solutions to real-life business challenges. Our postgraduate students participate in these projects and also benefit from the opportunities to be involved in live projects through the well-established industrial and business partnerships which have contributed to the continuing success of research projects across the Faculty. workshop
The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy is the leading centre for postgraduate level study and doctoral research in Continental Philosophy in the London area. Since its inception in 1994 it has developed a national and international reputation for teaching, research and publication in the field of post-Kantian European philosophy, characterised by a strong emphasis on broad cultural and intellectual contexts and a distinctive sense of social and political engagement.
Situated within its Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Kingston University's Visual and Material Culture Research Centre provides a staff and student focus for energetic interdisciplinary research in visual and material culture, and the histories of art, design, and architecture.
The Modern Interiors Research Centre (MIRC) at Kingston University acts as a dynamic focus for research within the disciplines of Design History, Architectural History, and Visual, Material and Spatial Culture, on the subject of the design of interiors of the 'modern' period ( defined as 1870 to 1970).
Design Research at Kingston University is developed through three distinct specialist areas of excellence and innovation, Design+Environment (D+E); Design for Communication & Image (DfCI) and Design for Body & Material (DfBM), which inform and support postgraduate research, the creative industries and wider cultural and public realms.
The recently established Contemporary Art Research Centre provides an intellectual and creative milieu for innovation in contemporary fine art. Taking its identity from Andre Breton's articulation of the imagination, we draw on that legacy of surrealism to conceptualise our project of innovation. In this way researchers - staff and students - seek to imagine and enact possibilities of contemporary art in contingency with social politics, technology, models of knowledge and modes of experience.
RERC brings together an energetic and expanding group of researchers, all working within the broad field of real estate but with a shared ambition and vision to drive forward the sustainability agenda as it applies to property. Thus a cross-cutting theme of the work of the Centre is to provide more sustainable ways of using and evaluating property as a resource in a changing world.
Call for Applicants The Stanley Picker Gallery is currently seeking to appoint two innovative contemporary practitioners to the Stanley Picker Fellowships in Design & Fine Art 2013. Each Fellowship provides up to £12,000 support, onsite studio space and valuable access … Continue reading →
Discussion panel, Thursday 16 May 2013, 6-8pm, ICA Studio, The event forms the culmination of a series of seminars produced by doctoral students at Kingston University, and aims to revisit and extend pertinent questions to have arisen throughout the programme.A … Continue reading →
The next Postgraduate Open Event for the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture will take place on Wednesday 22 May 2013. Attendees will be able to learn more about their chosen course, meet their Course Director and view the facilities. The … Continue reading →
Nicole Wermers & Boudicca: Fellows Studio Residency & Public Lecture Stanley Picker Gallery – Wed 1 May All Welcome! The Stanley Picker Gallery is presenting the first public opportunity to hear and see some of the ideas and works in … Continue reading →
Cutting: On the Fabric of the Human Body Ninela Ivanova hosts an open discussion with Rhian Solomon, Visual Artist and Director of sKINshipTM; Amy Congdon, PhD Researcher at Textile Futures Research Centre and Jane Wildgoose, Artist, Researcher, Writer and Keeper … Continue reading →