The Binks Hub Postgraduate Community

Our postgraduate community is for postgraduate students across the University of Edinburgh with an interest in the work of the Binks Hub.

We particularly welcome students who are conducting Binks Hub-linked projects with community partners, and/or whose research, like our own:

Engages participatory or co-produced approaches
Uses artistic and creative methods
Aims to foster human flourishing, social and community impact

We welcome students with experience using participatory and arts-based research approaches, or in research for community benefit, as well as those new to and curious about participatory and/or arts-engaged research.

Please join our community by signing up to our network list using the button below. If you are not part of the University of Edinburgh, please send us an email to be added to the list.

Come for a cuppa

Once a month, we host an informal online conversation for members of our postgraduate community. Binks Hub community cuppa events will be gently structured, comfortable, free-flowing, and supportive gatherings for members of our postgraduate community.

We hope to nurture sharing and curiosity, create space for connection between staff and postgraduate students, and create a contact point where participants can find out about Binks Hub activity and opportunities. We also hope these gatherings will catalyze good connections and peer support, and further formal and informal activities dictated by the interests of members – including potential for more hands-on, tactile experimentation with creative and artistic methods and practices.

"I found this workshop to be a rewarding and rare opportunity to try an arts practice that was truly new to me! I was at a phase in my PhD where I felt I was only reading and writing about arts-based practices, and this gave me the chance to create and express in a tactile and tangible way. I enjoyed connecting with others who are in different programs and stages of research but share a common passion for arts-based practices personally and academically."

Wren Wilson, first year PhD Anthropology

How it all began: Tapestry-making, woodturning, and crafting the network

In March 2022, Dovecot Studios hosted ten members of our postgraduate community in our first workshop session, led by artist Fiona Hutchison. In the three-hour workshop, we shared our ideas, experiences and aspirations as Fiona guided us through the production of small tapestries, the artistic practice both informing and being informed by our research.

Following the tapestry workshop, more members of the postgraduate community participated in a woodturning workshop hosted by Fine Piece Furniture at the Edinburgh Open Workshop and in a pair of online ‘Crafternoon’ sessions through which we practiced arts and crafts as we continued to discuss the future shape and function of the network.

If you, your colleagues, or your students would like to get involved in shaping the future of our postgraduate community, please sign up to our network list via the link below. We will communicate all updates and opportunities for the network to this list.