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TT LIVERPOOL/LoNDON Phd RESIDENCY

20-24 July 2026 LiverpooL (UK) + London 16-17 July 2026

This year the TT PhD residency returns to Liverpool for a week-long programme of events. As before, this will be held in the John Lennon Building at our partner and validating institution, Liverpool John Moore’s University. In the week prior to the residency, we are also offering an optional two-day stay in London, featuring group-excursions to the city’s art galleries and museums.

 Our focus this year is on the social relations that shape your project, from supervisory relationships to (trans)disciplinary expectations, from academic peer support and professional networks, to the support of family and kin.

In this spirit, we are inviting contributions from PGRs from other institutions to PGRs to join the Anthologies Assembly – a series of presentations, readings, exhibition formats, screenings, performances, microworkshops, listening sessions, etc. led by Transart Institute PGRs.

Other programmed events will address the residency theme directly, taking your doctoral projects as a stepping-off point to discuss the wider concerns that we all share as doctoral researchers.

In recognition of the complexity and relational nature of doctoral research, parts of the residency adopt a participant-led structure. Drawing on principles of Open Space Technology (Owen, 2008), each day is shaped by those present--through proposed sessions, shared questions, and self-organized exchanges. Rather than assuming a single answer or fixed pathway, the residency creates conditions where knowledge can emerge through collective inquiry.

See below for programme details.

RESIDENCY DETAILS FOR TT PGRs

RESIDENCY DETAILS FOR PGR GUESTS

LONDON

Thursday 16 July 2026

All times in British Summer Time (local time)

17:00-18:00

FRIDAY 17 July 2026

17:00-18:00

Optional: National Theatre PRIDE

SATURDAY 18 JULY 2026

Self-directed day IN LONDON

OR TRAVEL TO LIVERPOOL

Sunday 19 JULY 2026

LIVERPOOL

MONDAY 20 JULY 2026

TUESDAY 21 JULY 2026

WEDNESDAY 22 JULY 2026

THURSDAY 23 JULY 2026

FRIDAY 24 JULY 2026

TT SESSIONS: TALKS & WORKSHOPS

KEYNOTE: Play-Doh Fun Factory Starter Set, talk by Roy Claire Potter

MONDAY 20 July 2026 10:00 BST

If you leave Play-Doh laying round uncovered, it dries out. You can't use it. You might be bereft about this, depending on experience. A shrivelled up crusty thing can be used for something else, sure. But you won't be able to push it through the Fun Factory, at least not to make the shapes you desire (or the Factory desires).

What happens to research, or to the ways we appreciate the impact of research, when embodied artistic methods add more water?

Following a symposium keynote at Writing Art Writing Art Writing: When Language Becomes Material, and a guest presentation at Pacing and Spacing: Crip Process, Form and Reception in Art and Writing, Roy reflects on the conditions and implications of their Artist Researcher role at EVA International, Ireland's biennial of contemporary art (an adjunct position with Institute of Art and Technology at Liverpool John Moores University). The talk aims to open up questions of integrity and legibility at the core of artist research.

PhD TALK & WORKSHOP: Shy girl and other characters WITH VALERIE WALKERDINE

TUESDAY 21 July 2026 09:00-12:00 BST

For many years and in many ways, from drawing to performance, I have explored the embodied, hidden and occluded. What can be read across the body? What characters are lurking around the edges of our own subjectivities? In this workshop we will explore together work in this field and go on to use our own modes of practice and engagement to gesture towards the  complex multdiimensiality of  embodiment.

PhD WORKSHOP: BECOMING SOCIAL: The social modalities of doctoral research with SIMON POPE

THURSDAY 23 JULY 2026 15:00 - 17:00 BST

We worry about the problem of the lone researcher. While their doctoral programmes train you for independence and promote self-directed study, universities also worry about the rate at which researchers leave without finishing their degree – the so-called doctoral attrition rate. It is easy to attribute this to the failings of individual PhD candidates, and their lack of the resilience required to make it to competition. But perhaps our assumptions about the social modalities of doctoral research are the issue? 

Are PhD programmes, designed to produce independent researchers, also producing lonely and isolated ones who risk being cast adrift? Perhaps we could imagine other social modalities of doctoral research – ones that not just mitigate this risk, but actually promote alternative modes of research? What are the social relations that shape our doctoral journeys, which lie beyond the programme, and even beyond the academy? Could we go as far as reconfiguring doctoral research around collectivity, mutual support and peer-learning as a way to do things otherwise? How might this enable us to think differently about all aspects of the doctoral research process, including supervisory relationships, seminars, the shape of our thesis, literature review, research validity, examination, how your work is made public, and so on?

Although universities and faculty have paid attention to these issues, it’s the doctoral researcher who feels their effects most acutely. Using a creative adaptation of the ‘long conversation’ format, this two hour workshop will draw upon tractable examples, from your own experience, to explore how the affordances and constraints of various social modalities shape, and are shaped by, your doctoral journeys – and, if we so desire, how we might do things otherwise.

*Please note that the LJMU Library is closed and access will be limited for the duration of our residency.

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