PhD Opportunities
The Institute for Design Informatics is home to a community of PhD students who are researching subjects that are associated with our core specialisms and use a variety of methods that combine theory and practice.
We mentor and supervise an international PhD cohort that conducts research in different expertise areas and with its students enrolled in different programmes:
- The UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing
- The Edinburgh College of Art School of Design PhD (MPhil/PhD) programme: https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/design-mphilphd
- The School of Informatics ILCC PhD programme: https://study.ed.ac.uk/programmes/postgraduate-research/491-informatics-ilcc-language-processing-speech-technology
The Institute spans Edinburgh College of Art and the School of Informatics. Our staff expertise spans seven research themes and eight areas of discisplianry expertise.
Students often work collaboratively with researchers in other departments and organisations beyond the Institute. Our graduates pursue careers in leading universities as postdoctoral researchers and academic faculty, and as leaders in the technology and design industries.
We recommend you contact potential supervisors in advance of making an application. Please use these pages to identify themes and potential supervisors.
Supervisors
All PhD degrees require students to work closely with a supervision team. Please browse staff profiles to learn about the research specialisms and outputs for each staff within the Institute for Design Informatics. If your research is interdisciplinary, look at staff profiles in other subject areas, too. We encourage you to approach staff directly to gauge their availability and suitability as a prospective supervisor.
When making first contact with a prospective supervisor, please introduce yourself and mention your research intentions, and the specific route/programme you are interested in. If you maintain a website or online identity with research interests, please include a link. This helps potential supervisors to understand your vision of the scope of a PhD project, and your understanding of the type of practical – as well as intellectual – matters that postgraduate research entails. This early contact with staff should also be helpful to you, for decisions you will need to make about how to develop your proposal, and with whom you would like to work.
Edinburgh College of Art:
School of Informatics:
Our institute also has academics who are affiliated with us, but based in Schools outside of Edinburgh College of Art and the School of Informatics:
Community and Infrastructure
The Institute for Design Informatics (IDI) houses internationally renowned academics and some of the UK’s largest research and development projects. We bring together expertise in design, computer science, human-computer interaction, human-robot interaction, critical studies of computing, social science, arts, humanities and law. It is our culture that makes us stand out, our interdisciplinary research and our applied, practice-based and participatory research. Our values focus on ensuring data and design are utilised for the good of society.
Being part of the institute’s community means to be an active member and to also receive mentoring and support from other community members. Being active members means that we expect you to attend the institute’s many community and academic events, to bring in your ideas and enthusiasm to our gatherings, and to share your expertise and time with others.
As an IDI PhD student you will be provided desk space in the Design Informatics research office which is in the Bayes Centre of the University of Edinburgh. If you are enrolled in our Designing Responsible NLP programme, you will be provided with desk space in the CDT’s area in the Edinburgh Futures Institute, just a short walk from the Bayes Centre and the institute.
The IDI research office is home to researchers, academics and a professional services team who work together to meet the demands of running masters and undergraduate courses, multiple funded research projects and public events. The Informatics Forum, which houses researchers, lecturers, and PhD students in the School of Informatics, is fully accessible to all Design Informatics staff and students.
The research office is located above the design studios for the Design Informatics Masters Programme. This houses its own dedicated workshop featuring 3D printers, laser cutting, soldering points and tools for light assembly, and is equipped with a variety of technologies such as Arduinos, LEAP motion and 3D projectors. Students also have access to workshops in the Edinburgh Art College such as metalwork and woodwork. Students are also able to access equipment in the School of Informatics, which includes a robotics lab, a Virtual Reality studio, and its own maker space. The Edinburgh Futures Institute also hosts a range of labs and workshops, such as our VisHub (Visualisation Hub), and maker spaces. For working in a non-Design Informatics lab or workshop, you will typically require an induction and/or supervision by somebody who regularly works in that space.
Close to our design studio is Inspace, a gallery and public engagement space ran by IDI to foster creativity and interdisciplinarity through data-driven innovation. PhD students regularly use this for running events, exhibitions or hosting collaborators related to their studies.
