A group of the most talented Creative Industries PhD students from around the world has descended on QUT’s Creative Industries Precinct for this week’s CCI Winter School, an initiative of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation. Running from 21 to 27 June, the Winter School is a week-long program of interdisciplinary study, collaboration and social interaction drawing on the Centre’s expertise in digital media, communication and culture, economics, policy and law. Centre Deputy Director Dr Jean Burgess said, “Over the past several years, through our Emerging Scholars Program the CCI has established a strong tradition of offering high-quality professional development for our own 80 or so doctoral students and early career researchers, and we are really excited to be now providing a similar opportunity to emerging scholars from around Australia and the world.”
The 33 Winter School participants were selected on a competitive basis from a pool of 70 applications from 18 countries, and work on a wide range of creative industries topics, from the transforming digital media ecology, to online gambling, regional creative industries policy, artistic careers, and the contemporary music industry.
During the week, participants are working with mentors drawn from CCI staff as well as leading international researchers including Jack Qiu from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Nick Couldry from Goldsmiths, University of London, and Anne Galloway from Victoria University of Wellington. QUT PhD student Darryl Woodford says, "The bi-annual CCI Emerging Scholars programs are always inspiring occasions, and being able to extend that experience and work with such a wide range of high-quality national and international visitors has been great."
Ni-Chen Sung, a PhD student from Hong Kong, highlights the value of peer learning and interdisciplinary collaboration: “It’s so exciting to get to know so many researchers from different countries and with different interests, and to develop future collaborations with them”; and Kathleen Kuehn from Christopher Newport University says, “I feel excited and re-energized not just about my own research again, but also about working to capitalize on the collaborative sprit that the CCI Winter School has done a fantastic job of fostering.”
The participants are also taking part in intensive workshop activities on special topics and receiving direct feedback and individual mentoring on their own work. For details of the program and participants, visit http://cciwinterschool.org
Images from the event are available at http://flic.kr/s/aHsjAxzvqf