Research
Since the 1990s, Sheffield Hallam University has pioneered new approaches to research, using the creative talents of our staff and students to provoke new insights into a wide range of situations. We are now recognised as an international centre for creative research.
Art and Design Research Centre
SIA’s world-leading Art and Design Research Centre (ADRC), our own centre of talent and expertise, helps us to visualise the future. Based in the heart of Sheffield's thriving Cultural Industries Quarter, our artists, designers and film-makers use practice-led research to pioneer work in healthcare research, critically acclaimed independent film and public artworks, and discourse on fine art practice.
Outstanding research reputation
You will benefit from our excellent reputation, which led us to host the Design Research Society’s prestigious International Conference in 2008, attended by leading researchers from around the world.
Research and your own work
- You will learn alongside tutors who regularly undertake specialist commissions and engage in research collaborations.
- ADRC researchers can offer you expert guidance on how to develop your own research projects, as part of an undergraduate or postgraduate degree.
- Researchers from other fields at Sheffield Hallam University can also help to inform your creative work.
- Lab4Living brings together research expertise from SIA with researchers from health, rehabilitation, engineering and ergonomics to create design solutions which have a positive impact on quality of life for the user.
- SIA offers the opportunity to do a PhD (an advanced research degree) in the subject of your choice.
International research influence
Our research is world class, and applied on the global stage:
- Professor Paul Chamberlain has led the way in designing systems to help hospitals across Europe avoid serious medical accidents.
- Dave Cotterrell, Professor of Fine Art, returned from his stint as an official war artist in Afghanistan to create an acclaimed exhibition which transformed people’s ideas about the reality of medicine and war.
- Graham Whiteley, one of our graduates, has pioneered new ways of making very precise small objects, resulting in a new kind of artificial arm now used by NASA to test ideas about artificial muscles.
