Creative Practice Research Group

In our creative research and practice we make stories, experiences and environments which shape culture, meaning and understanding. We draw on cross-disciplinary research and engage community and industry partners to translate our research in the wider world. The creative industries are core to our identity with an emphasis on technology and creativity.

Our research

Creativity has been hailed as 'the driving force and most important skill of the 21st century as a power to be taught, understood and deployed on all levels of society' (Lutters 2020). At UTS Creativity is one of the eight Characteristics of Research and is core to the distinctive UTS experience across learning and research. The Creative Practice Research Group (CPRG) brings together leading creative research and practice academics within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, with a proud legacy of over thirty years in this space.

The Creative Practice Research Group is committed to research that has impact in the wider world to benefit communities, the economy, environment and society. We embrace complex questions that can only be answered through creative practice, where research-based inquiry and artistic innovation go hand-in-hand. We employ a distinctive model of creative practice-based research through our research design, methods and diversity of research forms and outputs.

We work across story, narrative, animation, documentary, hybrid-screen, sound, music, moving image, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, place-based experiences, visualisation, writing and publishing. Embedded within a university of technology we maintain a sharp focus on innovations including artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual screen production, immersive media, spatialised media and other emerging technologies. We are committed to the sustainability of creative practice in a rapidly-evolving technological landscape.

At UTS we draw on cross-disciplinary research in collaboration with the Visualisation Institute, Visual Communication Design, Creativity & Cognition Studios and the Animal Logic Academy. We effect and drive change through our partnerships with government, business, industry having partnered with Dolby, Hyundai, Flying Bark, Iloura and Industrial Light & Magic. Our partners also include arts and cultural bodies, galleries, libraries, archives and museums, including Antenna Documentary, the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Vivid Sydney, Mardi Gras Film Festival and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The Creative Practice Research Group are committed to research-informed teaching at UTS which models professional creative practices. We use studio-based, problem-focused teaching together with direct industry engagement to integrate complex knowledge and perspectives for our students.  We research and teach across cutting-edge facilities at UTS including the UTS Data Arena. In Higher Degree Research (HDR) we supervise Masters by Research and PhD projects, supporting industry pathways and provide expertise in the supervision of creative practice research projects.

Group members

Professional staff members

Honorary members

HDR students

  • Imran Firdaus
  • Tess Scholfield-Peters
  • Rachel L. Walls
  • Azade Falaki
  • Jacob M. Hedges
  • Karen Wyld
  • Luke T. Kelly
  • Evangeline Aguas
  • Anika Shah
  • Rumbidzai Mabambe
  • Sinead Roarty
  • Cale L Bain
  • Edoardo Crismani
  • Blue Lucine
  • Vanessa E. Badham
  • Mark J. Isaacs
  • Eleni Elefterias-Kostakidis
  • Samantha J. Lang
  • Gail S. Priest
  • Claudia Speidel
  • Shelley L. Bishop
  • Jianni Tien
  • Abdul K. Hekmat
  • Denby Weller
  • Kristyn Kay F. Maslog-Levis
  • Emma G. Wise
  • Monica Rouvellas
  • Patrick Slattery
  • Atul Joshi
  • Marcus C. Gale
  • Jason L. Di Rosso
  • Eleonora Cerqua
  • Kyra Giorgi
  • Jack C. Stanton
  • Julius Ambroisine
  • Bridget Mullany
  • Michael A. Charlton
  • Emma G. Wise
  • Rowan Woods
  • Sian McIntyre
  • Wanlong Chen
  • Kathleen J. Drayton
  • Joanne R. Kinniburgh
  • Anne M. Casey
  • Latoya Rule
  • Melissa H. Lucas
  • Nicole S. Gooch
  • Alexander E. White
  • Burcak Gurun Muraben
  • Eve Spence 
  • Matthew Campora

Current research projects

  • ABC Commission: Six Dances for World Plucked String Quartet (Brent Keogh)
  • ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) Project 2023-2026: Emergence: Examining gender equity in music via a new contemporary opera (Felicity Wilcox)
  • ARC Linkage Project: Folio: Stories of Australian Comics 1980-2020 (Pat Grant)
  • Dolby Australia: Immersive Audio for Games Engines, with UTS Visualisation Institute (Robert Sazdov)
  • Exploring Mawson. A hybrid documentary research project that investigates little known aspects of the first Australian Antarctic Expedition 1911 -1914 (Rachel Landers, with Emmeline Dulhunty. Data Arena Unreal Engine visualisation by Greg Ferris)
  • HRI_Japan Target A: Design of prototype novel interactions and creative content for a co-habiting AI agent aimed at supporting physical, social and emotional well-being and aging in place in older generations. Partnership with the Honda Research Institute 2022. (Deborah Szapiro)
  • Hybrid Documentary and Beyond monograph, Routledge (Rachel Landers)
  • Illustrating Intellectual Property for Impact: Copyright & Graphic Narrative (Pat Grant with UTS Law: Isabella Alexander, Genevieve Wilkinson and Evana Wright)
  • Immersive audio-visual research: Joseph Tawadros Quartet Data Arena (Brent Keogh, Greg Ferris)
  • In Sunlight or In Shadow. An iterative multichannel narrative immersive installation (Greg Ferris)
  • Japan Foundation: Continuum: Independent Australian and Japanese Animation (2022) (Deborah Szapiro)
  • MAAS Research Fellowship Program 2023: Spirits of the Hoey. An immersive hybrid documentary (Greg Ferris, Liz Giuffre)
  • Marynowsky-Smart sculptures: Renewable energy power generators as engaging public artworks, with UTS Visualisation Institute (Ian Stevenson, with Wade Marynowsky)
  • Memory Film: A Filmmaker's Diary, by Jeni Thornley, Visiting Scholar: an immersive cine-poem (feature documentary) from Jeni Thornley's extensive super-8 archive spanning three decades. Financed by MIFF Premiere Fund, Screen Australia & Documentary Australia. Supported by MediaLab, UTS. Co-Producer Tom Zubrycki, Editor Lindi Harrison (ASE), Composer Joseph Tawadros.
    Premiered MIFF August 2023. Nominated for the Australian Innovation Award (Black Magic) MIFF 2023. 
  • Screenwriting for VR: Story, Space and Experience, Edited Collection, Palgrave Macmillan 2022 (Alex Munt, with Kath Dooley)
  • ‘Sound in the Colourfield’. Pythia Prize Commission for Rubiks Collective. Original composition in response to the artworks of Helen Frankenthaler- for performance at Melbourne Recital Centre, October 2022. (Felicity Wilcox)
  • Surfacing urban wetlands (Alexandra Crosby and Ilaria Vanni), ARC Discovery. Urban wetlands in Australia provide benefits for climate change mitigation, pollution reduction, habitat provision and socioecological connection. However, in large cities like Sydney, urban wetlands are unseen because undergrounded, and, therefore not adequately understood. This illegibility, and loss of understanding by residents, planners and policy makers impedes wetlands' good management. This project surfaces wetlands through visualisation in a multimodal knowledge platform focusing on two urban renewal sites, Green Square and Marrickville South. We leverage design ethnography to develop resources for strengthening multiple stakeholders’ socioecological engagement through methods empowering just, creative and open participation.
  • The Green Square Atlas of Civic Ecology (Ilaria Vanni, with Alexandra Crosby)
  • The Talking Room: Design of a prototype robot functionality based on an in-class language and storytelling game that encourages an exchange of ideas, discussion, and shared experience. The Talking Room is designed to support inclusive practices and acceptance of diversity and children’s positive emotional development in a school student demographic. Project to be user tested in 10 countries in 2022. Partnership with the Honda Research Institute - Japan (Deborah Szapiro)
  • UNICEF: Development, design of creative content and interaction for an AI agent facilitated cross-cultural learning initiative aimed at supporting inclusive practices, fostering acceptance of difference and diversity and positive learning development for children (Deborah Szapiro)
  • Water Stories (Ilaria Vanni, with Alexandra Crosby, James Goodman & Elise van den Hoven). 

Recent Stories

The wonderful, fluorescent, massive world of tiny, invisible things: Creating transformative science stories for children. A FASS, FoS, FEIT collaboration.

Contact us

Alex Munt, Group Convenor – alex.munt@uts.edu.au

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.