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Durham Uni awarded £1 million to fund training in visual culture

The award was made by The Leverhulme Trust as part of its new Doctoral Scholarships Scheme following a bid led by Professor Ludmilla Jordanova of the University’s Centre for Visual Arts and Culture (CVAC).

The Centre was established in September 2014 as a result of Durham’s strategic investment in pioneering research in visual culture.

The Leverhulme Durham Doctoral Training Programme in Visual Culture will be launched at a reception to be held at Trevelyan College, Durham at 4pm on Wednesday, January 21, 2015.

The programme will recruit seven new PhD students in September 2015, with six additional students being recruited in both 2016 and 2017. Five studentships each year will be funded by the Trust, with the others supported by matched funding from Durham University.

The interdisciplinary programme builds upon Durham’s international excellence in the study of vision and perception, the analysis of the social significance of images and ways of seeing, and the interpretation of visual objects of all kinds, from artworks to scientific images.

It entails collaboration amongst researchers from the arts and humanities, social sciences and life and natural sciences, and with a number of non-University partners.

Director of the Leverhulme Durham Doctoral Training Programme in Visual Culture, Professor Jordanova, said: “The importance of critical visual literacy in the contemporary world cannot be exaggerated.

“Both visual culture studies and the many professions in which an attentive approach to visual culture is paramount – including the media, museums and galleries, science communication, law and medicine – have an urgent need for a new generation of scholars properly equipped to undertake nuanced and informed work in visual culture, both contemporary and historical.”

Director of the Centre for Visual Arts and Culture, Professor Janet Stewart, said: “This is an exciting opportunity for us to develop a pioneering interdisciplinary programme in doctoral education.”

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