Interested in doing a PhD with us?

 Serious Games are a potentially highly immersive, engaging form of education and training and have been used in several highly diverse fields.  Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is incredibly complex and while there are examples of Serious Games in EDI training, they could be potentially applied to significantly greater effect.  This project will review the state of the art in relation to Serious Games in EDI and investigate their effectiveness in sensitive subjects as a result of being able to simulate complex life experiences.  The project will involve evaluation to ascertain effectiveness of Serious Games for fostering empathy and sensitivity. 

Design fiction (or science fiction prototyping) is a design practice that explores the design space of a future product by creating fictional scenarios and objects (Sterling, 2005; Bleecker, 2009). The use of films in early stages of the design of technology is a practice that is a common practice in the HCI community (Gilardi et al., 2016; Briggs et al., 2012). Science fiction is often used by interaction designers to explore futuristic technologies and present them in context through ‘faking’ an everyday use case scenario as a short film (Mancini et al., 2010). Such films are usually centred on exploring the technology potential and its requirements. 

However, design fiction is still a novel approach in the design of virtual, augmented, or mixed reality experiences and further research is needed to understand its potential and limitations in this area. This project aims to explore the area of design fiction within the context of virtual, augmented or virtual reality.

 This project focuses on AI-driven digital forensics to combat deep fake manipulation in e-multimedia. Deep fakes pose risks to national security, justice, and public trust. Using diffusion models and machine learning, the research aims to develop a self-improving framework for detecting deep-fake-generated content. Key objectives include algorithm development, real-time adaptation, and collaboration with industry experts. Expected outcomes include novel machine learning models, high-impact publications, and partnerships with cybersecurity institutions. The project aligns with UN SDGs, advances digital forensics, and seeks funding through industry collaborations, grants, and strategic alliances to enhance research impact and economic opportunities. 

 Homelessness in the UK is at its highest level and expected to rise ​(National Audit Office,2024)​. Rough sleepers are increasingly vulnerable to violent crimes by the public ​(Sutton-Hamilton & Sanders, 2023)​, and stigma is a normalised reality faced by homeless individuals ​(Narendorf et al., 2022)​ . Discrimination towards people who experience homelessness, also known as ‘homeism’, remains an under-researched area ​(Canham et al., 2022)​. This project aims to design and develop an immersive serious game (ISG) for young people (15-24y/o) with the goal of reducing homelessness stigma and enhance empathy towards homeless people among the youth. 

 Virtual, augmented and mixed reality applications are becoming popular in cultural heritage as they allow to access cultural artefact that otherwise may not be visible by the general public and increase visitor's engagement with cultural heritage institutions.Mixed reality has developed in recent years, becoming more accessible to the consumer marked. However, developing for such technology in the context of cultural heritage remains difficult and expensive. This project aims to develop tools and a 'templating' framework that would allow cultural heritage institutions to develop and deploy their own mixed reality applications without the need of a software developer.

 Virtual reality is used in education and professional training. However, the assessment of learner performance is based on task completion. In some applications, body posture and behaviours within the experience need to be assessed as well. Previous research (Howie and Gilardi, 2020) developed methods to record in 3D and replay user behaviours in virtual reality, allowing for assessment. However, rewatching such 3D recordings is time consuming. This project aims to use AI to introduce a degree of automation in assessment tasks in virtual reality. 

 The deaf community is active in virtual reality social spaces, however technical limitations prevent them to use the full range of sign language communication, which is based on hand gesture, facial expressions and body language. This project aims to address this issue by designing and developing new technologies that will allow the deaf community to use sign language in virtual reality.

 VR exergames are video games that combine physical exercise with VR experiences.

They offer a unique approach to fitness by making exercise more engaging and enjoyable.

This project can be undertaken by researching one of the following topics:

- develop innovative design approaches and technologies for creating more effective and engaging VR exergames.  

- examine how VR exergames can be made more accessible to people with disabilities and diverse populations