Dr Anna Bramwell-Dicks
Subject Head of Creative Technologies and Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media

Research

Overview

The main driving force behind my research is the belief that technology, media and music all have an important role to play in society, particularly for improving health, wellbeing and access. This work manifests in various ways, whether that is on the SoundCeption project where we developed an App for blind people that enabled them to use their senses of hearing and proprioception together in a form of multimodal sensory substitution to access the content of visual images, or in the CoMusicate project where we explored how technology could enable adults with mental illness to make music together remotely, to connect socially and have a positive impact on their wellbeing, or through my disability representation research where I’m focusing on representation in new storytelling formats (including video games and Virtual Reality). From this, you can see that my research is primarily about people, and particularly disabled people. I always adopt a ‘nothing about us, without us’ philosophy in my research, and work closely with community groups. I am also autistic and have various (ongoing but mostly managed) mental illnesses, so am able to situate myself reflexively within the work that I do. As a slightly tangential research interest, I am also extremely fascinated by the power of music to affect how people feel, which is demonstrated through my work on the Sound and Music for Immersive Storytelling (SAMIS) project.

I currently (co-)supervise 5 PhD students:

- Silvia Mantilla-Wright (with Jonathan Hook): Musical empathy and video game narrative

- Tabby Holland (with Mariana López): Representation of non-visible illness disabilities in teen romance films

- Qiti Zhang (with Debbie Maxwell): Interactive Multisensory Immersive Experiences for visually impaired children to support development of social skills

- Callum Deery (with James Walker): Embedded questionnaires in video games

- Andy Egerton (with Mariana López): Configurable accessibility of immersive museum exhibits

I am open to supervising research students at both Masters by Research and PhD level, provided their proposed work aligns with my research interests (see above). 

Publications

Selected publications

• Bramwell-Dicks, A., Petrie, H., Edwards & A. D. N., Power, C. (2013) Affective Musical Interaction: Influencing Users’ Behaviour and Experiences with Music in Music and Human-Computer Interaction Eds. Holland, S., Wilkie, K., Mulholland, P., Seago, A. Springer Verlag, London
• Shu, W. & Bramwell-Dicks, A. (2022) Do People Matter? Presence and Prosocial Decision-making in VR. British Computer Society conference on Human-Computer Interaction. July 11-13, 2022, Keele, UK. Awarded Best Paper
• Bramwell-Dicks, A., Petrie, H. & Edwards, A. D. N. (2016) Can Listening to Music Make You Type Better? The Effect of Music Style, Vocals and Volume on Typing Performance. The International Conference on Auditory Display. July 2-8, 2016, Canberra, Australia 
• Swallow, D., Power, C., Petrie, H., Bramwell-Dicks, A., Buykx, L., Velasco, C. A., Parr, A. & O Connor, J. (2014). Speaking the Language of Web Developers: Evaluation of a Web Accessibility Information Resource (WebAIR). The International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs. July 9-11 2014 

Teaching

Undergraduate

Over the years I have taught on many different modules across different programmes and within different departments and faculties. I currently teach the following:

- Experience Evaluation (3rd year option)

- Web Application Design and Development (2nd year core)

- Disability, Accessibility and Representation in the Creative Industries (2nd/3rd year option)

I also supervise final year undergraduate projects, particularly those adopting scientific method within their approach.