Research Projects

Ecologies of Cultural Production

Ecologies of Cultural Production is a research project examining career construction in film, television drama and theatre – How do people enter the fields of filmmaking and theatre-making, and how do they develop their careers?

Through a survey of prominent actors, writers, and directors, the research aims to:

• understand how creative workers in film, television drama and theatre enter the sector and progress their careers
• examine the role of public cultural subsidies in career development
• illuminate the extent of career mobility between the film, television and theatre sectors
• examine the evolution of creative clusters (e.g. drama societies, production companies, theatre groups, regional broadcasters, etc.)
• examine the extent to which creative workers in these sectors must supplement their incomes from other sources

The purpose of the project is to inform public policy on arts funding and to establish a methodology that might be applied to all sectors of cultural production. The two immediate outputs will be a one-day seminar, 'Ecologies of Cultural Production', and a written report for Creative Ireland.

Principal Investigator: Assoc. Prof. Ruth Barton, Head of Film Studies, Trinity College Dublin bartonr@tcd.ie
Co-investigator: Emeritus Prof. John O'Hagan, Emeritus Fellow, Economics, School of Social Sciences and Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin johagan@tcd.ie
Lead Researcher: Dr Denis Murphy, Film Studies, Trinity College Dublin denis.murphy@tcd.ie

Augmented Play

Postdoctoral researcher Dr Néill O'Dwyer and Assist. Prof. Nicholas Johnson in Drama launched a pioneering production of augmented reality drama in the CHQ vaults in Dublin on 6th September 2019. Part of an inter-disciplinary team of researchers, Dr O'Dwyer and Assist. Prof. Johnson helped develop the third and final part of a two-year practice-based research trilogy, wherein the text has been reinterpreted for 1) webcast - Intermedial Play, 2) virtual reality - Virtual Play and 3) augmented reality - Augmented Play. This research presented a ground-breaking milestone for V-SENSE, a leading computer science research group at Trinity; Volograms, a domestic SME leading VR, AR and Mixed Reality technologies for the creative cultural industries; and the Trinity Centre for Beckett Studies based at the Trinity Long Room Hub, whose partnership was pivotal in the production, translation and dramaturgical direction of Beckett's Play.