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| The GSA’s Dr Stuart Jeffrey, one of five Co-Directors of One Ocean Hub |
- One Ocean Hub (OOH), which will be led by the University of Strathclyde, is one of 12 new UKRI Global Research Hubs funded through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). The GCRF is a key component in delivering the UK AID strategy and puts UK research at the heart of efforts to tackle the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- Dr Stuart Jeffrey of the GSA’s School of Simulation and Visualisation is one of five Co-Directors of One Ocean hub, working with Hub Director, Prof Elisa Morgera of Strathclyde University
- Over the next 5 years, Dr Jeffrey will also co-lead one of the Hub’s major research projects, focusing on Emotional Engagement with the Ocean, along with fellow academics from South Africa (Dylan McGarry – Rhodes University)and Fiji (Ann Cheryl Armstrong – University of the South Pacific).
Science and Universities Minister Chris Skidmor MP announced today, 22 January 2019, that £200M will be invested into 12 major inter-disciplinary research hubs across the UK which will be funded through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). The initiative will see £20M invested in Glasgow via One Ocean Hub. The Hub will be led by the University of Strathclyde with The Glasgow School of Art’s Dr Stuart Jeffrey as one of its five Co-Directors.
Announcing the 12 UKRI GCRF Hubs alongside 16 other international research partnerships, Mr Skidmor said: “The UK has a reputation for globally influential research and innovation, and is at the centre of a web of global collaboration – showing that science has no borders.
“We have a strong history of partnering with other countries – over 50% of UK authored research involves collaborations with international partners.
“The projects being announced today reinforce our commitment to enhance the UK’s excellence in innovation at home and around the world, driving high-skilled jobs, economic growth and productivity as part of the modern Industrial Strategy.”
We are entirely reliant upon the ocean. The ocean produces half the oxygen we breathe, absorbs over a quarter of global carbon dioxide, and contributes to freshwater renewal. Entire countries and numerous communities depend on the ocean for food, work, livelihoods, culture and spirituality.
Over-exploitation and multiple competing uses, pollution and climate change, however, are pushing ocean ecosystems towards a tipping point. Current solutions are disconnected across sectors and levels, and from those most affected by ocean degradation.
One Ocean Hubaims to transform our response to the urgent challenges facing our ocean. It will bring together academics from over 50 international institutions, international agencies and community groups to work on five major research programmes.
Dr Stuart Jeffrey, from the School of Simulation and Visualisation at The Glasgow School of Art, is one of five Co-Directors of One Ocean Hub, and will co-lead a £2M research programmes in partnership with academics from South Africa and Fiji. One element of the programme will be a fund (the DEEP fund) to enable artists and communities to develop creative and cultural heritage work which can be shared around the world to help other communities, as well as policy makers, understand their relationship with the oceans, emotionally, culturally, politically and economically.
“In helping mobilise people to care and protect the oceans, a deep emotional engagement with them may matter as much as a scientific understanding of the challenges they face. One Ocean Hub will use creative responses and representations of the ocean environment and cultural heritage as a means of engagement and dissemination. However, it also actively use their production as a research method to explore and share the multiple, competing conceptions of the ocean, its ownership and custodianship.”says Dr Jeffrey.
While work on emotional engagement with the oceans will necessarily arise from the communities most intimately related to them, the project will encourage work that has global reach, specifically work that can be disseminated on-line to the broadest possible audience The Glasgow School of Art’s School of Simulation and Visualisation is in the forefront of research harnessing the power of new technologies such as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality and part of the project will be to explore the means by which these technologies be used creatively to capture and represent the complex eco-systems of hard to visualise seascapes.
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For further information on The Glasgow School of Art contact:
Lesley Booth
07799414474
For further information on One Ocean Hub contact
University of Strathclyde press contact:
The Glasgow School of Art
The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) was founded in 1845 as one of the first Government Schools of Design, as a centre of creativity promoting good design for the manufacturing industries of Glasgow. However, the School’s lineage can be traced to 1753 when Robert Foulis established a school of art and design in Glasgow, which was described as the single most influential factor in the development of eighteenth-century Scottish Art. Today, The GSA is internationally recognised as one of Europe’s leading university-level institutions for the visual creative disciplines. Our studio-based approach to research and teaching brings disciplines together to explore problems in new ways to find innovative solutions. The studio creates the environment for inter-disciplinary working, peer learning, critical inquiry, experimentation and prototyping, helping to addressing many of the great challenges confronting society and contemporary business.
The School of Simulation and Visualisation (SimVis)
The School of Simulation and Visualisation (SimVis) currently specialises in undergraduate teaching, postgraduate teaching and research. It has been a leader in research and development within the field of high-end 3D simulation and visualisation since 1997.Working with EU and UK Research Councils, Government departments and blue-chip companies, SimVis has created advanced visualisations for the Heritage Sector as well asvarious industries including the automotive, built environment, , shipbuilding and medical sectors. SimVis has a strong background in the heritage and medical visualisation sector, and has produced ground breaking visualisations of the historic environment as well as highly accurate 3D anatomical models for medical education and research.