TVAD Talk: Dr Ivan Phillips, on his forthcoming book Once Upon A Time Lord: The Myths and Stories of Doctor Who.

On Wednesday March 11th in our TVAD Talks series, we heard Dr Ivan Phillips, talking about his forthcoming book Once Upon A Time Lord: The Myths and Stories of Doctor Who for I.B.Tauris, due for publication in 2016.











































Towards the end of the 2010 series finale, ‘The Big Bang’, as he reboots the Universe and waits to fade forever from existence, the Doctor talks to the sleeping child Amelia Pond about the adventures they will now never share, the lives he will never have lived: ‘We’re all stories in the end,’ he says. ‘Just make it a good one.’ Although the contributions of the current show runner, Steven Moffat, have not met with universal approval among either fans or casual viewers, his scriptwriting here, as elsewhere, shows a sharp awareness of the centrality of storytelling to the enduring success of the Doctor Who phenomenon. It is no coincidence that fans of Doctor Who tend to talk in terms of ‘stories’: the first story they remember, their favourite story, the ‘lost’ story that they most wish could be found, the most under- or over-rated stories, and so on. The merging of this storytelling element with features from traditional mythologies has been reflected in the analyses of many critics in the years since John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado’s pioneering study Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text (1983), most notably Matt Hills in his Triumph of a Time Lord (2010). My own book, however, is proposed as the first full-length monograph to focus entirely on Doctor Who as an accumulated and richly interwoven, often contradictory, body of myths. The need for such an analysis was indicated over a decade ago by David Rafer: The Doctor himself is a carrier and purveyor of his own myth but also encounters images and patterns drawn from ancient world mythology. The way that the Doctor confronts and feeds into myth reveals something of the enduring nature and appeal of mythic narratives and symbols and is a contributory factor in the mysticism of the character (In Butler, p. 123). Acknowledging the status of Doctor Who as a substantial myth in its own right – Miles Booy has referred to it as ‘a significant national narrative’ (2012: 166) – this also promotes an exploration of the many ways in which it has become a locus of translation for existing mythologies, ancient and modern. Central to my study is a recognition that Doctor Who – ‘a voracious gobbler of ideas’ (Newman, 2005: 70) – has always taken its raw material from elsewhere, reimagining elements of classical mythology as well as drawing upon the established ‘mythic’ traditions of literature, cinema, television and other media. By examining the diverse stories which Doctor Who has generated across the last half-century, my aim is to demonstrate not only its singular ability to carry fantastical narratives into everyday life but also, perhaps, the continuing need for such narratives in the modern world. The joy of this project is that it enables me to merge a lifelong fan obsession with my academic research interests and the kind of subject matter that I have long discussed with my students. The story has only just begun, but I look forward to sharing it with some of you...



















References:
Booy, M. (2012) Love and Monsters: The Doctor Who Experience, 1979 to the Present. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.
Butler, D., ed. (2007) Time And Relative Dissertations In Space: Critical Perspectives on Doctor Who. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Matt Hills, Triumph of a Time Lord: Regenerating Doctor Who in the Twenty-First Century. London and New York: I.B.Tauris, 2010.
Newman, K. (2005) Doctor Who (BFI TV Classics). London: BFI.
Tulloch, J., and Alvarado, M. (1983) Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Watch Ivan's TVAD Talk here:

Return visit for TVAD Visiting Researcher 2014-5, Dr Javier Gimeno-Martínez!

Javier Gimeno-Martínez is Assistant Professor at the VU University Amsterdam. He holds a MA-degree in Industrial Design from the Universidad Cardenal Herrera, Valencia (Spain) and an MA-degree on Art History from the Universidad de Valencia. He got his PhD in 2006 from the KULeuven with the dissertation “The Role of the Creative Industries in the Construction of Regional/European Identities (1975-2002): Design and Fashion in Belgium and Spain.” He was a visiting scholar in the department of Design History at the Royal College of Art (London, UK) for the year 2009-2010. Dr Gimeno-Martínez’s research interests encompass design and fashion as related with consumption, gender and national identity. He has been conducting research on the shifting cultural status of industrial design and craft from the 1950s up to today with Belgium as case study, funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders from 2007 to 2010. The culmination of the first three years of this research project was the seventh ICDHS conference “Design and Craft: A History of Convergences and Divergences”, organized in collaboration with Dr. Fredie Floré, which provided the opportunity for an international discussion on regional specificities as well as the impact of global processes of industrialisation. If, until now, design history has been largely dominated by the Western narratives of industrialization, then moving the focus towards non- industrial design practice might bring non-Western scholars to the forefront. Moreover, previously marginalized design histories in industrialized countries can finally get a voice. Dr Gimeno-Martínez was an Editor of the Journal of Design History from 2008-2013 and he is currently co-editing a special issue on Dutch design for that journal.

·        PROGRAMME

     THURSDAY 19^th MARCH 2015

10 am to 12 pm - Reading Group – Gallery Café

Session with TVAD and School research staff and PG students. Texts have been tabled for discussion from Dr Javier Gimeno-Martínez, Dr Barbara Brownie, Dr Steven Adams and Dr Pat Simpson. They are available to participants on request from Dr Grace Lees-Maffei g.lees-maffei@herts.ac.uk

  

1 pm to 3 pm - National Army Museum Project discussion, JGM, BB and SA.

  

3 pm to 4 pm, AB132 – Design Talk: ‘Design and National Identity’, Dr Javier Gimeno-Martínez

What are we talking about when we talk about British design? Or Dutch design? What is produced in the country or what is consumed in the country? Both positions are substantiated by different theoretical approaches. We must be however aware of the implications when using one or another. This talk will elaborate on these theoretical frameworks and how they can contribute to a better understanding of national design.

      FRIDAY 20^th MARCH 2015

11 AM – 4 PM TVAD SYMPOSIUM ‘Design and National Identity’ convened by Dr Grace Lees-Maffei – Room 1A161

11 am – Coffee, Welcome and ‘Introduction: Designing Worlds: National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization’, Dr Grace Lees-Maffei, Reader in Design History, School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire.

Contemporary design is global. Along with international developments in higher education, the influence of post-colonial theory, and intellectual endeavours like ‘world history’, design historians are now writing Global Design History (to use the title of a 2011 edited collection). While the nation state is no longer the only socio-cultural or political-economic unit forming our identities and experiences—if it ever were—this paper examines the value of national frameworks in writing design history and asks whether moves to discard them are premature. Are national histories of design dependent upon outmoded generalisations and stereotypes? Or do they demonstrate cogent frameworks for the discussion of common socio-economic and cultural conditions and shared identities? Globalizing design history involves writing new histories of neglected regions and nations and revisionist histories informed by the findings and methods of new comparative and global histories, of celebrated industrial nations.

11.30 am - What can we learn about research methodology from the sacking of the Bastille: 2-4 pm. Tuesday 14th July 1789? Dr Steven Adams, Associate Dean Research, School of Creative Arts & Head of Research Degrees (Social Sciences Arts and Humanities Research Institute), University of Hertfordshire.

In this brief talk, I want to look at some of the methodological problems encountered in the examination of an historical event, the fall of the Bastille that marked the start of the French Revolution. In an attempt to a raft of set secondary sources on the subject to one side, I turn instead to a range of primary material - textual and material - generated in the weeks after the Bastille's fall, texts and artefacts that defy easy categorisation and perhaps test the boundaries of some normative forms of academic history, art history and design history. We are left, I suggest, with things and writing about things made and written  by citizens struggling to keep pace with the events unfolding around them. In an attempt to begin find a place for myself in these events, I turn to a set of methodological strategies from codicology and cultural studies, to existentialism, 'chronographie' and the study of necrophilia. In a nutshell, the talk attempts to bring some historical and textual fragments into the light in the same way that those who sacked the Bastille, laid its contents out for the comment and inspection of their peers in the days after the 14th of July

12.15 am – Modern Wife, Modern Life: Expectations of the 1960s Irish Housewife, Dr Ciara Meehan, Senior Lecturer in History & Associate Programme Tutor for Humanities, School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire.

The Modern Wife, Modern Life exhibition opens at the National Print Museum of Ireland.  It explores representations and expectations of Irish housewives as seen in the pages of women’s magazines from the 1960s. The exhibition has been supplemented with domestic objects crowd-sourced from the Irish public. While the objects themselves are not particularly unusual, many of them had fascinating and revealing backstories. These objects are being used to construct a picture of how everyday life was experienced and understood by ‘ordinary’ women in the 1960s.

1 pm to 1.45 pm – Lunch, Provided

1.45 pm - A Special Relationship: The Transatlantic Domestic Dialogue, Dr Grace Lees-Maffei, Reader in Design History, School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire.

Design History has been bounded by national borders, and yet design is local, regional, international, intranational, and global as well as national. In this presentation, I call for transnational design history, using the case study of domestic advice literature, a mediating genre which contains a wealth of information about real ideals of the consumption of design in the home. Just as manners are markers of national identity (in that the people of different countries display different behaviours) so advice literature has been a tool in the formation of national identity. For example, Sarah A. Leavitt (2002) has discussed the role of homemaking literature in the process of Americanization, turning immigrants into American citizens. But while domestic advice books have a normalizing function—a white middle class ideal is published for white middle class readers to follow—mainstream examples have largely failed to recognise the ethnic diversity of US, and UK, society. Furthermore, an insistence on national borders as borders for understanding domestic advice literature has led to erroneous chronologies based on the relatively recent introduction of domestic advice literature into US publishing when compared with its long roots in the European literary tradition. And directly after World War II, historian Arthur Schlesinger regarded etiquette literature as a channel for the maintenance of world peace, in that it could help people from different countries to understand and show respect for one another. Informal manners have been presented as an American national trait, not only in British domestic advice literature with its implied fear of Americanization, but also through claims in US-produced titles of the forging of American manners. The pre-eminent American advice writer, Emily Post. continually adapted her advice to keep pace with the informalization of American society, and yet she was ridiculed by authors of ‘the new hospitality’, Mary and Russel Wright, who saw her not as the arbiter of American etiquette, but rather as a proselytiser for English manners at odds with the needs of mid-century Americans. To understand the importance of domestic advice literature in mediating national identities, we must also recognise the transatlantic development of the genre in a ‘domestic dialogue’ between the UK and the US of several centuries standing.

2.30 pm – ‘A graphic negotiation with the past, present and future. Political devolution and the symbols of the Spanish regions (1977–1991)’, Dr Javier Gimeno-Martínez, VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Political devolution results in administrative institutions that are generally created anew. However, these new institutions try to conceal the brevity of their existence by reusing communal symbols from the past, such as flags or coats of arms. Even when these symbols might objectively carry certain polemical connotations, the weight of tradition can become an opportune tool for legitimating institutions, so that the past is somehow forced to conform to the present. Properly analysing this instrumentalization of historical iconography can pose quite a challenge for both historians and designers. Indeed, it is present-mindedness rather than historical perspective that drives these legitimating processes. This talk analyses the negotiation of signs by the governmental bodies that resulted from Spanish political devolution and their negotiation with both their past under Franco's dictatorship and their future in democratic Spain.  

3.15 pm – ‘Re-packing the nation: The Analysis of Ideological Symbolism in Tourist Advertising for Poland’, Dr Marta Rabikowska, Principal Lecturer in Creative Industries, Leader in Creative Employability, School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire.

Dr Marta Rabikowska will present preliminary findings from her research on tourist advertising campaigns for Poland, issued after 2004 (the date of Poland’s accession to the EU). Rabikowska has published on the history of Polish advertising and the representation of gender stereotypes in Polish advertising before (2003) Rabikowska, M., ‘Female representation and dominant ideologies in Polish advertising’, East Central Europe. Vol. 30, 2, p. 39-61), which research provided the foundation to her analysis of ideological symbolism in tourist advertising affected by the intense migration movement from Poland to the EU countries in the last decade.  In this presentation, she will look into the stereotypical articulations of ‘national pride’ and ‘national treasures’ as examples of establishing a ‘new global identity’ for a nation strongly connected with the past on the one hand, and affected by contemporary migration movement and cultural exchange on the other hand.  An encounter of values and discourses, which takes place in the advertising campaign commissioned by the Polish Tourist Board (2010-2015), will be contrasted with the results of Rabikowska’s research on identity-making processes among Polish migrants living in the UK  (2009) Rabikowska, M.  & K. Burrell, 'The Material Worlds of Recent Polish Migrants: Transnationalism, Food, Shops and Home', in Kathy Burrell (ed.) Polish Migration to the UK in the 'New' European Union: After 2004,Aldershot: Ashgate, pp.211-232; Rabikowska,M.( 2010) ‘The Ritualisation of Food, Home and National Identity among Polish Migrants in London’, Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture.  Special Issue. Ed. by Marta Rabikowska (2010) 16(3), May: 377–398), and other relevant literature on national symbolism and representation of Polish migrants in the Western media. The underlying thesis to this argument is grounded in the concept of re-appropriation of national identity in a changing historical context and in the arbitrariness of representation.

4 pm - Discussion of next steps and farewell.

For more information, contact the TVAD Research Group Leader, Dr Grace Lees-Maffei g.lees-maffei@herts.ac.uk

FoodNet: Food-Related Research in the School of Creative Arts

On 28^th January 2015, The Centre for Research in Primary and Community Care (CRIPACC) at the University of Hertfordshire launched FoodNet, a network for policy, practice and research stakeholders interested in food and public health in Hertfordshire and the surrounding area. Papers outlining key research projects being undertaken by the Food and Public Health Research Unit within CRIPACC were followed by a poster session displaying relevant research from across the University. TVAD contributed a poster showcasing food-related research in the School of Creative Arts.

The poster featured the work of Dr Pat Simpson, Reader in Social History of Art, whose AHRC-funded research project ‘Sex and Socialist Realism’ investigated the relationships between Soviet concern with eugenics in the 1920s and visual constructs of the New Soviet Woman. One aspect of this research focused on propaganda images promoting hygienic maternity and childcare in order to help boost the very low birth-rate and poor survival rate for babies and young children. Central to these images was the message that ‘breast is best’, so working mothers should express milk to be given to babies in factory crêches. Posters also gave clear instructions on what foods and drinks breastfeeding mothers should and should not consume.

Another aspect of the research examined the utopian Soviet idea of a collectivised lifestyle that would allow more women to engage in paid employment. Grigorii Shegal’s poster shows the New Woman opening the door to this new way of life, with its communal canteens, laundries and crêches – an escape from the ‘kitchen slavery’ symbolised by the image of a primus stove.

Mindy Yiran Xie, a student on the BA Hons Contemporary Design Crafts in the School of Creative Arts depicted her current project is about food and contemporary jewellery. The work is designed to make people aware of the beauty of food and encourage a different connection with food via the form of jewellery. So far, Mindy has have made a ring with a 'fork' on top so you can pick food with, and also treats the picked food as the 'diamond' of the ring.

Professor Joy Jarvis, Professor of Educational Practice, and Dr Rebecca Thomas, Programme Leader of Photography, represented their project 'All’s Well that Eats Well: Sharing Food, Ideas and Ideals in the Creative Arts'. Over the last few months the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire has run several initiatives revolving around food and its remarkable ability to create a relaxing environment in which to engage with important issues in learning and teaching. These include a large-scale indoor picnic, themed workshops around ‘breakfast’, ‘lunch’ and ‘tea’ and a student breakfast club, all designed to bring people together in lively and friendly exchanges.

Finally, Dr Grace Lees-Maffei, Reader in Design History, shared her AHRC-funded project 'Designing Domesticity'. It examined the social and material aspects of entertaining at home, from hosting a dinner party to informal teenage gatherings. Using domestic advice books (books about etiquette, homemaking and home decoration), her research showed how the design of the home influences the social organisation of eating at home, as much as those social factors influence domestic design and decoration.

The launch was a success for all involved. Here are some images of the event, including the papers examining research in CRIPACC:

Dr Wendy Wills speaking at the FoodNet launch

Dr Angela Dickinson at the FoodNet launch

Dr Faith Ikioda discussing FoodNet research

Dr Grace Lees-Maffei and Dr Wendy Wills at the Poster Session

TVAD TALKS: Prof Michael Biggs and Kevin Dowd

TVAD Talks take place on the second Wednesday of each month during term time. In 2015, we have heard three speakers from the School of Creative Arts, Professor Emeritus Michael Biggs spoke in January about the evaluation of research, Kevin Dowd gave a presentation ‘Exploring practice-based methods in graphic design research’ and Matthias Hillner's talk was entitled ‘From virtual typography to intellectual property rights (IPR), and from research through practice to research into practice’. Dowd and Hillner are both staff on the Graphic Design and Illustration BA Hons and they presented as a double bill in February. Here, we are able to share two of the three presentations we have enjoyed so far this year. Watch Prog Biggs' talk on research evaluation here:

Next, we are able to share a talk by Kevin Dowd, ‘Exploring practice-based methods in graphic design research’ The discipline of graphic design is growing to accommodate novel ways of gathering data and generating findings, expanding beyond the established foundation of borrowed rhetoric that has informed current research methodologies. However, there are few examples of methodologies tailored specifically to the skills of the graphic designer as researcher, and fewer still with practice at their core. This talk explores examples of practice-based research in graphic design, highlighting a need to develop methods for design research practitioners. This is examined further through my own study, which proposes a novel system of practice-based methods in graphic design research. Watch Kevin here:


Our TVAD Talks series continues in March with Dr Ivan Phillips, speaking about his forthcoming book Once Upon A Time Lord: The Myths and Stories of Doctor Who - watch this space!

Creativity as a Research Method

Creative writing as a research method has been already established within critical theory and, of course, literary studies. Nevertheless, I still wonder how findings from the process of creative writing can contribute to other disciplines, like social sciences, politics, cultural studies, or film studies. A recent TVAD talk by professor Michael Biggs regarded the complexity of practice-based research within creative arts, and one of the discussed case studies was a novel, submitted as a PhD, being itself a final result from the research process and the documentation of that process. A novel by proxy represents creative writing. For a PhD it still needs to be accompanied by some form of reflective documentation which subdues to the nature of PhD argumentation. The same with dance, film, or a piece of art 'submitted' as a PhD. The relationship between the 'intellectual' part versus the 'creative' part must be explained in a classical - non-creative form of writing. As professor Biggs admitted this situation is changing as much as our disciplines are changing. the borders between intellectual and creative are more and more blurred. I am very interested in the process of writing per se across different academic disciplines, especially, in how our style of writing represents a particular research paradigm. Although novels and poems are accepted as practice-based research more commonly than not these days (a different question is how they are evaluated by REF), it is not so common to see creatively written articles within non-creative disciplines. There are some interesting examples of creatively-inspired publications within social sciences, like Les Back's famous The Art of Listening and his creative diary online http://www.academic-diary.co.uk/contents.php, or a widely awarded novel by Slavenka Drakulic, 'A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism', or Mitchell Duneier' Sidewalk, engaging with the authors' social and political research in an entertaining and compelling way. We are all encouraged to engage our audience (impact) through more emotional and personal means, so our writing becomes more individual and unique, thus breaking through the patterns of classical academic argumentation, inherited from natural sciences, and opening to experimentation. Yet we do not have many pieces out there, which would reflect creatively on non-creative matters. If our research to change the world and especially if it is going to be funded by taxpayers' money, we need to explain ourselves clearly and with no doubts. Policy makers would not like to read novels and poems instead of traditional reports. But why not? Maybe policy makers would benefit from creative writing workshops, singing workshops or reading poetry together? Such a proposal would need to be explained first and predict the outcomes clearly, so no taxpayer's money is wasted. It may happen one day (maybe even is happening somewhere now), that the language of disseminating research findings will have to be based on stanzas and creative narratives, involving sounds and images which are not embedded in Power Point, but produced by a researcher communicating with the audience on more than one - verbal level. It must be happening to a certain extent in communication with audiences and stakeholders with disabilities. How much effort academia undertakes to 'translate' academic books and reports for deaf people or blind people? Such translation deploys non-verbal 'signs' and in that sense encourages creativity. Yet signing and Braille reflect the systematic organisation of words and letters derived from the dominant discourse, so, although not languages but codes, they are verbalised in the intellectual manner analogous to language. Creative articulation of research findings, which takes my attention, would abandon the system of sense and unfold on the level of the senses. For example, an experimental film projected as a final outcome of a project on aging of the current population, or an exhibition of smells as a way of disseminating finding from a project on...pottery, or using colour as a method of identifying our sensitivity to ...urban design. There are project like that, of course, applying creative methods of research and dissemination across all disciplines (it is quite fashionable, in fact), but how such projects engage with writing their findings? Is that writing as creative as the methods applied? How to write about smells and colour and experimentation without falling into total solipsism and unverified subjectivity? Whose experience would we represent when writing? How to articulate what our senses are going through? Using synesthesiae to capture multisensoarial experience seems a bit dated. How else can we capture the impact of non-verbal stimuli in academic writing? I would like to see those smells and colours and images submitted instead of writing. To communicate, would they need to reflect our current intellectual coding like signing or Braille? or could they serve as a trigger releasing some form of 'the unknown', surprise, or even shock. I am not promoting Romanticism with its Platonic methods of truth discovery and sublime, but rather the studies of affect, in which mind and body are working together on equal rights, but not with equal intensity. I suppose I would like to see a new measure in place for the next REF: the ratio of affect. Why? To open to new modes of communication and new modes of impact, which do not know the borders of disciplines or the patterns of thinking traditions. How would such impact be evaluated? Do we need to establish new 'affective norms outside of normativity which affect denies? It will take us some time to answer this question, and while trying we are already discovering new knowledge. PS. I would like to add an avatar with some fragrance representing my intellectual approach here, but my keyboard does not have one (yet).

TVAD Talks coming up in 2015...

The TVAD Research Group hosts research seminar lunchtime presentations on the second Wednesday of each term time month. All are welcome and lunch is provided at 12.45 for a 1 pm start.

Our next TVAD Talk will be on January 14^th 2015, when Prof Michael Biggs, Professor Emeritus in the School of Creative Arts will be speaking about doctoral assessment in creative arts, an area in which he has considerable expertise and experience. Prof Biggs was involved in setting up our Professional Doctorate in Design (DDes), aimed at academic staff in architecture and design broadly understood, in universities and institutes of higher education. Read more about the University of Hertfordshire's DDes here: http://www.herts.ac.uk/courses/professional-doctorate-in-design 

On Wednesday February 11^th 2015, TVAD will enjoy a double bill of TVAD Talks presented by two of the staff members from our Graphic Design and Illustration course team: 

 
Matthias Hillner, ‘From virtual typography to intellectual property rights (IPR), and from research through practice to research into practice’

This presentation will describe a journey from professional graphic design practice in the field of motion typography to design research and theory building. Building on Sir Christopher Frayling’s differentiation between ‘research into practice’, ‘research through practice’ and ‘research for practice’, the presentation will discuss possibilities to connect research with practice in the field of art and design. These different paradigms will be discussed in conjunction with my journey through MA studies, MPhil studies, and PhD studies. These three stages are strongly linked to my professional art and design studio practice in the field of time-based typography. Two projects will be highlighted as practice-based connection points between stages of research: Virtual Typography and the so-called ‘SafeView’ project. The former is a consultancy-based business in the field of motion graphics, the latter a proprietary initiative to innovate the ATM interface. The talk aims to provide inspiration on how the connection between research and practice can be utilized for the purpose of fund raising and for entrepreneurial endeavours. Including two disparate subject areas such as motion typography on the one hand and IPR on the other, may seem confusing. The talk will, however, show how such unrelated topics may connect with each other through research.

The journey from professional reflective design practice to theory building in the area of IPR, will comprise my successful funding bid with NESTA in 2005, my ‘not so successful funding bid’ with Design London in 2009, and my successes obtaining funding within and outside the University of Hertfordshire in 2010. Last, but not least, the talk will provide a succinct outline of my current research into how designer-entrepreneurs utilize IPR in order to obtain financial support for their design initiatives. This will include references to interviewing techniques and qualitative research analysis.

Second on the double bill for February 2015, is Kevin Dowd, ‘Exploring practice-based methods in graphic design research’

The discipline of graphic design is growing to accommodate novel ways of gathering data and generating findings, expanding beyond the established foundation of borrowed rhetoric that has informed current research methodologies. However, there are few examples of methodologies tailored specifically to the skills of the graphic designer as researcher, and fewer still with practice at their core. This talk explores examples of practice-based research in graphic design, highlighting a need to develop methods for design research practitioners. This is examined further through my own study, which proposes a novel system of practice-based methods in graphic design research.

Further TVAD Talks planned for 2015 are our March TVAD Talk (Wednesday March 11^th) when Dr Ivan Phillips will speak about his forthcoming book Once Upon A Time Lord: The Myths and Stories of Doctor Who and, in May our last TVAD Talk of the 2014/15 academic year will be given by Jodi Nelson, speaking about her PhD in Critical and Creative Practice in Film & Media at the University of Sussex (Wednesday February 11^th 2015).

For more information, contact TVAD Research Group Chair, Dr Grace Lees-Maffei, g.lees-maffei@herts.ac.uk