Is your research immersive, interactive or multi-sensory? If you’ve got an idea for a research project that can be experienced, such as a digital cultural archive or a new piece of wearable health technology, a PhD by practice based research and exegesis can work for you.

This innovative form of PhD in information technology encourages multidisciplinary, creative and dynamic projects, and is the only one of its kind in Australia. It’s offered by sensiLab, a collaborative, interactive, immersive research and learning space at Monash University.

You’ll be able to present a substantial amount of your research through an immersive, interactive demonstration or exhibition that engages one or more of the senses. You’ll also be examined on a written exegesis of about 35,000 words.

Your research will typically be interdisciplinary, linking IT with another field such as health and medicine, urban planning, cultural heritage or design. Areas such as creative robotics, 3D visualisation, simulation and animation, interactive media, wearable technologies and games are suited to this PhD program.

You’ll have access to Monash’s leading academics across a wide range of disciplines, and you’ll be encouraged to test your idea by deeply exploring the possibilities. Make prototypes. Play.

Monash student Sojung Bahng is undertaking a PhD by Practice Based Research in arts and technology, focusing on new-media film and virtual reality art.

“I’ve always been interested in developing original media systems with digital technologies to reflect aesthetic experiences through new media.

My practice-based research is based on developing VR films to explore the concept of critical empathy. Critical empathy is the coexistence of empathy and critical thinking. This dualistic nature of critical empathy could be examined by balancing immersion and distance in virtual reality. I believe that critical empathy is necessary for people to fully understand others and the world around them, especially in today’s multicultural, postmodern and diverse society.

Doing my PhD at Monash’s Sensilab, a lab for creative technology and new media art, I can create artwork and do research simultaneously.”

Monash offer scholarships to support outstanding interdisciplinary research projects. Contact us to check your eligibility or find out more at monash.edu/it/phd-practice-based