News
Research Round-up: Good News from the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities
Posted on behalf of: Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities
Last updated: Monday, 10 March 2025

A celebration of recent research activity and successes of Media, Arts and Humanities researchers.
Formerly the 'Good News' section of the Research Newsletter, the Research Round-up is a regular feature within the Media, Arts and Humanities Institute and a space to celebrate each other's successes. If you'd like your good news included in the next Research Round-up, email us at MAH-research@sussex.ac.uk.
To catch up on previous news, read the February Research Round-up.
Awards, recognition and funding
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Alice Eldridge will lead the UK team on the HERA-funded project RURALEX: Knowledge in Crisis: The Dynamics of Environmental Expertise amidst Rural Change, an innovative investigation of the crisis of ecological knowledge in rural Europe. Read more about RURALEX.
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Jo Lindsay Walton, Irene Fubara-Manuel and Nic Seymour-Smith will be joining a consortium of researchers and non-academic collaborators for the AHRC BRAID-funded project Sustainable AI Futures, which aims to address real-world challenges in the responsible development and application of AI technologies. .
External engagement
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Mat Dimmock appeared on ‘An Organ for the Sultan’, which explored the story of Thomas Dallam, tasked by Elizabeth I to build an organ so spectacular it would impress the most powerful man in the world and change England’s reputation.
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Jim Endersby’s article ‘’ was published in The Guardian, in which he compares the rise of AI in the humanities with the introduction of calculators into maths, and stresses the importance of teaching students to recognise poor-quality information and make their original work stand out.
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David Hendy’s article ‘’ is published on History of the BBC website, exploring the history of ‘the workplace’ to celebrate 20 years of The Apprentice.
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Micheál O'Connell was invited by the Seattle Irish Heritage Club to give the talk ‘To Hell with Trad! Irish Digital and Tech Art Now’ at events during March, inspired by his essay ‘’. While pointing to diverse practices like glitch art, VR, and AI-based works, the talk critically examines whether all such activity could or should engage with the pressing questions raised by Ireland’s role in global technology terms.
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David Tal , saying the current situation is so far beyond the usual parameters of the Arab-Israeli conflict there has been little telling how either side will act.
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Tom F. Wright’s article ‘’ was published in The Conversation, ahead of the 2025 Oscars.
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The Sussex Festival of Ideas’ 2025 lineup has been announced. A collaboration between the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities and , it harnesses the transformative power of the arts and humanities to fashion new ways of thinking about the past, present and future. This year’s celebration has been curated based on the theme of 'New Dawn', and features events organised by Ben Burbridge, Lucy Robinson and Chris Warne; Alice Eldridge; Martin Evans; Chris Kiefer, Steve Symons and Dimitris Kyriakoudis; Stuart Hall Fellow Bleue Liverpool; Karis Petty; and Pollyanna Ruiz. .
New work and publications
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Ryann Donnelly is in discussion with arts writer Amah Rose Abrams at The ICA on 19 March to celebrate the release of her new book, (Repeater Books). Focusing on the groundbreaking work of sculptor Eva Hesse and other women artists who redefined the boundaries of bodily expression, Body High blends art criticism with raw personal memoir.
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Carol Dyhouse’s book has been published by Unicorn Publishing Group. Both memoir and cultural history, it considers attitudes to personal appearance through four generations of women in the author’s family, weaving memory through a wide-ranging exploration of fashion, femininity and feminism in the recent past.
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Beatrice Fazi published two significant research articles in December 2024. In "The Computational Search for Unity: Synthesis in Generative AI", published in the Journal of Continental Philosophy, she explores how AI systems create "synthetic" outputs, arguing that the term means more than just "artificial". In the journal Media Theory, her lead article "Machines That Create" revisits the ideas from her 2018 book Contingent Computation in light of recent generative AI developments.
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Clive Webb’s new book, has been published by Profile Books. Clive has appeared on numerous radio shows to promote the book, which explores the untold story of the writers and philosophers who took on the United States government for its war in Vietnam.