our alumni

My PhD project investigated how the smartphone might be read through the Eastern Orthodox icon to offer insights into contemporary experience of the online world and the smartphone. Research centred on framing forms found in the icon and the smartphone’s compositions, resulting in the production of three separate installations (Linz, Newcastle, and York); two live performances; and an augmented reality artwork. Insights include the proposal of ‘thinking-through traces’ as a practice-led derivation of Karen Barad’s agential realist diffractive methodology for provoking dynamic relationality between subjects. As well as asserting the continuing relevance of the Eastern Orthodox icon to secular contemporary culture, this project posited that the icon and smartphone’s frames might be understood as marks that make present the presence of an absent transcendental realm, be it digital or divine. 

Currently I am working as an Impact Coordinator and Research Fellow at Leeds School of Arts where I continue to pursue my practice-led research interests as well as supporting academic colleagues. I am also working on new journal articles and essays derived from my PhD research and am developing the project further using the form of the paper peepshow as a means to explore the relationality between the icon and the smartphone. New artworks culminating from the development of the project will be presented in a forthcoming exhibition at Maggs Bros in London.