Groups pages are a way to create a page on the UAL online profiles which brings together UAL staff, research outputs, grants and links using the Elements system.

These pages are currently being piloted with a small number of groups to see if they are suitable for wider use.

The functionality of these groups is somewhat limited - for instance, they can only include one banner image, and all data must already exist in Elements, so external members cannot easily be included. However, we hope that it will offer a simple way to bring together this information and showcase it for external audiences. 

The current pilot will be completed and assessed by the end of 2025, and a decision will be made whether to roll it out to more people after that. In the meantime, if you have any questions please contact the Elements team at elements@arts.ac.uk

CoRH consolidates UAL’s leading position in UK comics research, with an impressive list of outputs from noted scholars, and a thriving Postgraduate Research community working at the cutting edge of Comics Studies. You can find out more about our members and their research using the links on this page.

Study Comics at UAL

From Posy Simmonds to Gerald Scarfe, Brian Bolland to Sue Coe, many of the biggest names in comics have graduated from UAL over the years.

If you would like to discuss studying for a PhD on comics at UAL, the first thing to do is identify relevant researchers who might be able to supervise you. We encourage you to browse our members pages (see links) and get in touch for an informal discussion in the first instance.

For more general information on applying and studying for a PhD at UAL, please visit our Research Degrees page.

Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice, also known as CRiSAP aims to extend the development of the emerging disciplinary field of sound arts.

Founded in 2005, for over a decade CRiSAP has been a leading international organisation, fostering innovative sound arts practice. In addition to the various symposia and conferences CRiSAP has organised at Tate Modern and the British Library, the four books edited by the two CRiSAP directors – Autumn Leaves, Playing With Words, In the Field and On Listening – have been extensively reviewed in the popular and academic press as providing unique maps of their respective territories.

Core CRiSAP members have had their work transmitted on Radio Four, Radio Three and ResonanceFM (in the UK), on ORF (Austria) and CBC (Canada). Their work has won international prizes, and been exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery, Tate Modern, Beaconsfield Gallery, Space Gallery, National Gallery (in London), Surrey Art Gallery (Canada), ZKM (Germany) and the Kashi Art Gallery (India) amongst many others. CRiSAP was awarded the 2011 Sir Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education.

Main aims

To encourage the broadening and deepening of the discursive context in which sound arts is practised

In addition to the various symposia and conferences CRiSAP has organised at Tate Modern and the British Library, the four books edited by the two CRiSAP directors – Autumn Leaves, Playing With Words, In the Field and On Listening – have been extensively reviewed in the popular and academic press as providing unique maps of their respective territories.

CRiSAP has partnered with organisations across Europe in the Sounds of Europe initiative, which resulted in performances, publications and symposia.

To investigate the potential of archival materials to animate contemporary sound art debate

CRiSAP has become the custodian of two strategically significant archive resources: the Her Noise archive and a large consignment of documents pertaining to the thirty year life of the London Musicians' Collective (LMC) and audio records of the UK's first arts-orientated radio station, ResonanceFM.

To develop innovative software that is user-tested, peer-reviewed and made available to a wider creative constituency

In the first three years of our existence we developed Speechcutter and Déjà Vu, two resources that have been presented at international conferences (the International Computer Music Conference and the Pure Data Conference) and published in a peer-reviewed journal (Organised Sound).

To embed sound as an artistic practice within University of the Arts London

Since CRiSAP's inception, we have contributed to the validation and delivery of an MA in Sound Arts at London College of Communication and have grown our roster of doctoral students to six. We are a partner (with the BBC, BFI and Sony) in Queen Mary's EPSRC-funded Media and Arts Technology doctoral programme.

We convene study days designed to encourage engagement with sound arts across the University, have organised workshops and masterclasses for doctoral students from all disciplinary backgrounds, and have participated in events organised by the University's other research centres, including Design Against Crime.

The Illustration Studies Hub (ISH) was founded in 2023 by Rachel Emily Taylor & Luise Vormittag (Camberwell) and Ian Horton & Paul Jackson (LCC) to gather up and celebrate illustration research in all its forms at UAL (University of the Arts London). As a big university we do not always know about each others’ research, and as a postgraduate research student it can be difficult to find community.

ISH hosts regular events, talks, reading groups and meet-ups to share practice, test ideas, socialise, form relationships and develop new projects.

From October 2025 we have a physical home at Wilson Road, which forms part of the Camberwell campus (UAL).

Visit our website to find out more about our events: https://illustrationstudies.myblog.arts.ac.uk/ 

The Interior Futures research hub aim is to create and nurture an international research network expanding knowledge bases situated in and around interior design. The Interior Futures Research Hub exists within Camberwell College of Arts and Chelsea College of Arts.

The Open Research Team at UAL helps research staff at the university to broaden the reach and impact of their research worldwide through scholarly communication - the process by which scholars create, evaluate, share, and curate their research output. We can support all researchers with issues on publishing; retaining your rights; complying with funder policies and ensuring your work is available through Open Access routes.

We do this in several ways:

• Maintaining our institutional repository UAL Research Online
• Providing one to one training and advice on UALRO, Open Access and any other scholarly communications topics
• Helping you pay for Open Access where appropriate, and advising on Open Access matters

If you would like to book an appointment with us (online or in person), please email us at ualresearchonline@arts.ac.uk. Alternatively, book onto one of our online drop ins, where we will give a demo of UALRO, and answer all of your Open Access questions!

Visit our website for more information: Open Research Guide

The research environment team are primarily responsibile for putting together UAL's REF submission. As part of this they also manage the Elements system.

UAL DESIS Lab is one of the founding members of the international DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) Network. It was established in 2012 by Professor Adam Thorpe and Professor Ezio Manzini (UAL Chair of Design for Social Innovation, 2015-2018).

The Lab brings together academics, researchers and postgraduate students from across the university whose design and research activities are directed towards social innovation and sustainability. Through the DESIS network they are connected with likeminded colleagues at 68 other labs in design schools and design-focused universities in 32 countries across the globe.

Visit the UAL DESIS Lab to find our more about the netowrk's aims and activities, or to get involved. 

UAL: Painting Research Network links artists, academics, and practioners who share a serious engagement with contemporary painting and its possibilities. We explore what it means to research painting as a living culture, one that recognises painting as an expanding field, but still relating to its own specific histories and traditions. 

UAL: Painting Research Network is open to all current UAL staff and research students whose research or practice deals with painting or related forms. Our activities create space for open, critical, and public dialogue about what it means to 'research' painting now. We ask how do paintings themselves create new knowledge? By what means does studio practice and scholarly enquiry inform one another, and how does painting meet the challenge of the contemporary moment?
To join send a link to your UAL Elements page to jcp@arts.ac.uk

UAL: Painting Research Network is a UAL wide research group based at Camberwell College Arts. It has developed out of a number of painting initiatives at the UAL such as Paint Club (2009 – 2016) and paintingresearch (2015 - 2021) and is closely linked to the Journal of Contemporary Painting which frequently publishes work by UAL staff and research students. 

UAL: Painting Research Network aims to support academic staff, both individually and collectively to develop world leading research projects that focus on the subject and practice of painting, and that explore how painting can engage actively with disciplines outside its own field in knowledge exchange and inter-disciplinary research.  

UAL: Painting Research Network actively welcome enquiries into practice-based PhD study, where painting in its widest interpretation is central to creative practice. Please visit our research degrees page 

UAL: Painting Research Network is a University wide group co-ordinated by researchers at Camberwell College of Arts.

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UAL: Painting Research Network members regularly organise symposia, conferences and exhibitions that seek to further research in painting. These include: Painted Garments UAL, The Hub, Camberwell College of Arts, 2026; The Curatorial and Painting UAL Doctoral School, 2025; Material Subversions and Transmediterranean Dialogues MNAHA, Luxembourg, 2025; Shapeshifter: Painting & Performance, UAL Doctoral School, 2024; Arcadia for All? University of Leeds, University of Leicester, 2023/4; The Digital Documentation of Materiality in Painting: The Case of Contemporary Korean and British Abstract Art Sonje Art Centre, Seoul 2022/3; British South-Asian Visual Art Post Cool Britannia Camberwell College of Arts and British Art Network, 2021/2; Paintings and other works by David Troostwyk Camberwell Space, 2019; A Point of Gesture Wimbledon College of Arts, 2015; Michelangelo Pistoletto Wimbledon College of Arts, 2018; Painting As ReModel Camberwell College of Arts, 2018; Painting after Technology Tate Modern, 2018; Tableau Project CSM, 2015; We need to Talk about Painting Chelsea College of Arts, 2015; Simon Hantai The Institute Français, 2014; Painting As Document Tate Britain, 2014; There a Ghost in My House Tate Britain, 2014; Becoming Medium CSM, 2013; and The Processes of Painting Swedenborg Society, 2009. 

Alongside writing, discourse and curation, the making and showing of artworks themselves is a vital vector for producing knowledge through painting. UAL: Painting Research Network members' practice, whether abstract, figurative or in the 'expanded field' has been recognised and exhibited at leading art research institutions globally including at: Bauhaus Museum Dessau, Germany; British Museum; British School at Rome; Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland; Nanjing Museum of Contemporary Art, China; National Portrait Gallery; Oriel Mostyn; Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA; Royal Academy of Arts; Studio Voltaire; Tate St Ives; Turner Contemporary; Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, China. Beyond the walls of art-specific institutions, we embrace the dissemination of painting in community and non-art settings, with network members showing their work at sites as diverse as 10 Downing Street; Bishop of Rochester residence; Brixton Tate Library; DKUK; Horniman Museum; Natural History Museum and The Ragged School Museum.