[ecrea] PhD scholarship in AI, personalisation and narratives

*Royal Holloway University of London, Departments: Media Arts, School of 
Management*

PhD scholarship

*‘Persons, people and personalisation: Understanding subjectivity 
through AI’*

Applications are invited for a fully-funded PhD studentship on 
Artificial Intelligence (AI), personalisation and narratives at Royal 
Holloway, University of London, in partnership with a range of 
commercial firms (covering AI, media content production and gaming 
platforms). This award, tenable for three years and covering both fees 
and an enhanced maintenance grant, is made by the TECHNE AHRC Doctoral 
Training Partnership under the National Productivity Investment Fund 
Partnership Award scheme. The project, due to begin on the 1^st of 
September 2018 or as soon as possible thereafter, will be supervised by 
Dr Olga Goriunova (Media Arts) and Professor Mark Lycett (School of 
Management).

*The Project*

AI-driven personalisation offers a clear opportunity for creative 
industries to more effectively engage audiences. But personalisation is 
reliant on profiles created from individual and collective data, raising 
questions as to what gaps exist between the models and human experience. 
This project will partner with world-leading media and AI firms to 
understand how such personalisation can be effectively and ethically 
exploited in story experiences to generate greater audience engagement. 
It addresses a clear creative industries business challenge with clear 
commercial returns.

Living human beings generate data that both individually and 
collectively feed the profile-creation and various other methods through 
which machine learning techniques personalise content. This raises 
several interesting research questions, such as:

  * How are living human beings mapped onto the profiles and personas
    used for personalisation?
  * How effective (or constraining) is that mapping process?
  * What ‘gaps’ exist between the AI ‘models’ of the human experience
    and the actual experiences of those humans when they receive their
    personalised content?
Consequently, this PhD focuses on such questions, covering the 
techniques of personalisation both in terms of machine learning 
innovation and their cultural effects, to the practical ones, on how 
specific audiences respond to personalised content. The overall aim of 
the project is to understand how effectively a ‘subjectivity’ modelled 
by AI works with human experiences, conceptually, technologically, 
ethically, and in terms of personalised cultural content.

The methodology for this project will draw ondigital and cultural 
theory, ethics, audience research and Design Science Research (DSR). 
Using mixed methods is the most fitting approach for an 
interdisciplinary PhD.  DSR will be especially useful in that it 
partners critical/theoretical reflection with a practical approach to 
delivering value to our partner via its: (a) iterative nature, promoting 
continuous learning between problems and solutions; (b) focus on 
utility, ensuring that the outcomes are of practical economic benefit; 
(c) ability to both integrate theory from reference disciplines and 
generate new theory via the design process; and (d) focus on improving a 
knowledge base via reflection on practice and generation of innovation.

*The Student*

The successful candidate will sit between two departments (Media Arts 
and School of Management) as part of the new Centre for Digital 
Creativity, working collaboratively with our industrial partners. We 
anticipate that this will include at least 9 months of work at a 
collaborator site over the tenure of the project. A good grasp of 
machine learning techniques is necessary, to further research on how 
those techniques ‘construct’ persons and audiences – thus, the 
successful candidate will be qualified to a level that demonstrates 
knowledge of both supervised and unsupervised machine learning 
techniques and their application in the context of personalisation. 
Ideally, this knowledge will be partnered with a critical cultural 
training, perhaps in fields, such as philosophy, ethics, social, media, 
digital and cultural theory or software studies – such that a critical 
perspective is brought to the work.

*The Studentship*

The studentship includes a stipend of £16,777 (plus fees at home/EU 
rates) for three years.  There is an additional NPIF stipend of £550 per 
year to facilitate engagement with the Partner, and students can apply 
for an additional six months stipend to engage in extended development 
activities such as work placements.

As a TECHNE student, the successful candidate will have full access to 
the TECHNE Doctoral Training Partnership development activities and 
networking opportunities, joining a cohort of about 50 students per year 
from across seven universities in London and the south-east. TECHNE 
students can apply for additional funding to support individual or group 
training and development activities.

Applicants must meet the UK/EU residency requirements as described Annex 
1 of the ‘Research Council Training Grant Guide ’ and comply with the 
other Training Grant  conditions set out there and in the ‘Terms and 
Conditions of Training Grants’   Both documents are available at; 
https://www.ukri.org/funding/information-for-award-holders/grant-terms-and-conditions/.

AHRC Techne Doctoral Training Consortium

_http://www.techne.ac.uk/_

*Further Information and How to Apply*

The post is based in Egham, Surrey where the College is situated in a 
beautiful, leafy campus and within commuting distance from London. The 
successful applicant should be prepared to spend significant time on 
secondment with industry partners.

For an informal discussion about the post, please contact Dr Olga 
Goriunova at (_olga.goriunova /at/ rhul.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(olga.goriunova /at/ rhul.ac.uk)>_and Professor Mark Lycett at 
(_mark.lycett /at/ rhul.ac.uk) <mailto:(mark.lycett /at/ rhul.ac.uk)>_

**

*How to Apply*

Applicants should submit the following to Dr Olga Goriunova 
at (olga.goriunova /at/ rhul.ac.ukno) later than *10 August 2017*: (1) A 
two-page curriculum vitae, including contact details of one academic 
referee; (2) a 1 to 2 page letter outlining their qualification for the 
studentship; and (3) a writing sample if such is available.

*Interviews: *Shortlisted applicants will be notified by Monday, 
*20August*. Shortlisted candidates will be required to make a 10-minute 
presentation to a group of staff on their proposed take on this project.

Interviews are scheduled to be held at Royal Holloway on *28 August 2017*.

**

/The College is committed to equality and diversity, and encourages 
applications from all sections of the community./


---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please
use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------