The theme of climate change narratives invites research into how the performing arts, literature, film, and/or media respond to one of the most urgent global crises of our time. From speculative fiction to disaster narratives to portrayals of sustainability, this area of study examines the diverse ways climate futures are imagined and communicated. We welcome proposals that explore the role of storytelling in shaping public understanding and engagement with environmental challenges and climate crises. This theme encourages research that connects narrative, ethics, and ecological futures. Relevant topic areas include:

• Science fiction, climate speculation, ecological disaster narratives, and climate catastrophe culture
• Climate future narratives and theatre
• Sustainability in, or on, television
• Narratives of climate change and nonhuman animals

The theme of nonhuman worlds and animals offers a wide range of research possibilities that examine how animals and nature are represented, understood, and intertwined with human culture. Whether through speculative or science fiction, the representation of gardening and horticulture in literature or media, or the portrayal of animals in legal and social narratives, we invite proposals for projects that explore the complex relationships between humans and the nonhuman world. Topics should offer fresh perspectives on how animals shape, and are shaped by, cultural practices and storytelling, highlighting the ethical, social, aesthetic and imaginative dimensions of these interactions. There will be opportunities to work, via the Centre for Human Animal Studies, with external organisations for proposals connected to breed specific legislation, dog parks, and therapy dogs in schools. Potential topic areas include:

• Animal futures in speculative fiction addressing evolution, uplifting, alternate histories, changed or non-terrestrial ecologies, genetic engineering, animal cyborgism, and related themes
• Gardening/horticulture and writing or television, histories and impact of garden programmes on television, suburban gardening practices, gardens and gardening on film
• Narratives of dangerous dogs/breed specific legislation, media representations of dangerous dogs, dogs/breeds and identity, status or fighting dogs and masculinities.
• Dog parks, dog walking as cultural practice, dog walking narratives
• Therapy dogs narratives, critical analysis of therapy dogs in schools

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) presents profound opportunities and challenges for contemporary research in the arts and humanities. Whether through speculative fiction, ethical debates, or creative exploration, AI reshapes our understanding of technology, society, and the future. PhD project proposals in this area should be concerned with narratives that interrogate the implications of AI, explore the ethics of posthuman futures, or consider AI’s role in reimagining human-nonhuman relationships. These research themes offer rich terrain for critical and creative enquiry, addressing urgent questions about technology’s impact on culture, ethics and advocacy.

• The representation of AI in speculative fiction, film and/or television, including its role in dystopian and/or utopian narratives
• Narratives specifically addressing the ethics of AI and their ramifications in and/or for posthuman futures
• Responsible use of AI in animal advocacy, including critical analysis of AI in animal agriculture, animal language, AI and the development of advocacy campaigns.

The Terence Davies archive, held by Edge Hill University Archive and Special Collections, is a world class collection of materials from across the personal and professional life of the late Liverpool-born filmmaker and writer. It has immense and untapped research potential, with much of the collection unseen by anyone beyond Davies’ close circle of family, friends and colleagues. As an artist associated with producing a body of work that drew heavily on his own life experiences, the archive collection offers a unique opportunity to examine the relationship between Davies’ personal life, his distinctive creative processes and the films he made. Alongside the Davies collection, we also hold the archive collection of Liverpool-based film production company Hurricane Films, who produced three of Davies’ later works. Their collection offers additional opportunities for researchers to reveal aspects of Davies’ professional life and relationship with production companies. We are seeking proposals from researchers interested in working with these archival resources under three broad topic areas:

• Autobiography and Memory: The Cinema of TerenceDavies would explore and reassess Terence Davies’ place in the history British art cinema. The project would draw on the Terence Davies papers which comprises new archival material donated by Davies. These papers offer a unique insight into Davies’ working methods throughout his career and provide fresh insight into how personal history, trauma and memory informs the directors creative approach in both his early autobiographical work and later literary adaptations. 
• New Labour and British Art Cinema: A case study of Terence Davies. This project would consider the career of Terence Davies in the context of the New Labour Government and the British film industry from the mid-1990s until 2010. Using new archival material, the project would reflect on the political and cultural landscape in this period and understand where Davies fits within British Cinema of the time.
• Adaptation and Personal History: The Films of Terence Davies. Using new archival material, this project would consider the ways Terence Davies adapts personal memory into personal cinema. Engaging explicitly with the director’s correspondence, pre-production materials, journals, and diaries this project would analyse how these autobiographical elements of Davies life are rendered aesthetically across both his early ‘Liverpool’ films and his later literary adaptations.