Following a call in late 2019, the Arts & Humanities Research Institute has funded five pop-up research projects to undertake a wide variety of interdisciplinary and socially engaged research activities within the new REACH (Research & Engagement in the Arts, Culture and Humanities) Space located on Level 3 of the East Wing building.

Over the next few months, the projects will be exploring diverse themes. These include women’s war history, media aesthetics, Bahamas marine locations and cinema memory, circular design practices and virtual reality interfaces that explore sensory and perceptual shifts amongst individuals with experience of neuro-diverse conditions.

The projects all share interdisciplinary and socially engaged research approaches, bringing together researchers from across five Faculty of Arts & Humanities departments and drawing in colleagues from other faculties such as Social Science & Public Policy and Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience. A variety of external partners will be involved including: EYE Film Museum Amsterdam, Julian Leedham (designer), Crafts Council UK, University of the Bahamas, media activists, Bath Spa University, University College London, London School of Economics and Political Science and more.    

Designed as a creative place to develop connections and collaborations across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, the REACH Space will be utilised by funded projects in a variety of ways.

From the traditional – reading / viewing groups, study spaces, project planning sessions – to the creative – co-inquiry activities, design workshops, stagecraft, immersive public engagement sessions – the space will enable projects to generate different knowledge, differently.

The projects funded are:

• An underwater sense of place: Bahamas marine locations and cinema memory (Professor Erica Carter, departments of German and Film Studies)
  
  
• What does circular design mean for designer-makers in the UK? (Dr Lauren England, Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries)
  
  
• History and Aesthetics of Media Working Group (Dr Bernard Geoghegan, Department of Digital Humanities, Dr Seb Franklin, Department of English, Dr Erika Balsom, Department of Film Studies)
  
  
• Between lived experience and simulated presence: Exploring memory, empathy and embodiment in the clinical context through virtual reality (Clara Jo, King’s Artist-in-Residence)
  
  
• Development of a new stage play – As Happy as God in France (Dr Julia Pascal, Department of English)

If you would like further information about these projects or the REACH Space, email reachspace@kcl.ac.uk.

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(Aug 2022 - The Department of German now the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures).