Graduate Studies
The Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology does not administer any graduate programs of its own. Instead, students whose interests and research ambitions cross the mandate of any of the Milieux clusters are welcomed and encouraged from any graduate program at Concordia with a recommendation from their supervisor (or at least one member of the thesis committee) who must already be a member of the Milieux Institute.
Milieux membership is ideal for graduate students who have:
- Research, design or artistic ambitions across the domain of arts, culture and technology
- Strong disciplinary skills with an interest in cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration
- A commitment to the idea of communal and collaborative research and research-creation
- A desire to explore, create and build opportunities beyond the boundaries of their graduate degree program.
- Specific interests/background in one or more of research or research-creation
Application Process
The process for becoming a formal member of the Milieux institute is as follows.
- Students should indicate potential interest in Milieux participation and membership when they apply to a graduate program at Concordia. If you are applying to a program at Concordia University and are interested being a part of Milieux please fill out the Expression of Interest form.
- Students should become familiar with the activities one or more clusters at Milieux and choose a primary cluster for membership. Ideal ways to do this are to attend cluster activities and events and/or meet up with existing cluster faculty and students and/or to work as a research assistant on a cluster-based project.
- Students should make contact with faculty and/or leaders of the cluster to indicate interest and determine specific membership requirements of the cluster.
- Once this is established (normally in the first year of the student’s program at Concordia), membership will be granted upon completion of an online form (see below), and a recommendation of the cluster leader and the student’s supervisor (or advisor) who must also be a member of Milieux.
Programs
There are two major interdisciplinary programs at Concordia that are ideal for students interested in research at Milieux.
In addition, the following department based programs are all excellent springboards for participation in one or more Milieux clusters. These programs have very active Milieux faculty.
It is essential that students interested in Milieux make the effort to contact potential faculty supervisors or advisors who are already Milieux members about their interests. Please consult the cluster pages or our faculty member list to help direct your inquiries.
Sampling of Research Directions
Experimental / alternative game design
Game cultures and player studies
Cultural studies of games and play
Play and Materiality
Game/new media curation and performance
Media archaeology
Critical cultural studies
Global / Transnational digital / media cultures
Interactive textiles
Digital weaving
Wearables, art and design
Bioart and design
Sensors, haptics and performance
Physical computing
Immersive technologies / technology and the senses
Indigenous new media, art and design
Indigenous futurism
Critical disability studies and design
Mobility and sound studies
Maker culture and education technology
Digital imaging and photography
Post-photography
Current Students
Milieux is home to over 120 graduate students. Students and faculty alike describe the experience as a whole new model for research.
“Doing my work alongside others at Milieux requires dialogue and interaction between people with disparate backgrounds: an arts person speaks to a science person who speaks to a games person who speaks to a sociology person who speaks to an engineer. It gets really exciting because you have people who normally communicate in completely different languages learning how to communicate in a common language. And, it’s a new language”. –Alumni magazine
“We have people here who may not call themselves artists, but who are interested in creative practice,” says Duff. And perhaps the artists will gain a different model for working. They may become more collaborative, and less tied up with the romantic ideal of the artist who works alone, and who extracts from his or her solitary head the sometimes parched summary one reads in artists’ statements. –Globe and Mail
“The clusters themselves come out of articulations of the critical mass of research which we think is strategically oriented. In other words, if we were going to put a group of people together who had something in common to talk about, could they leverage their work into something more, whether it be research funding or impact on the community, productivity, recruitment of students, and these sorts of things?” –Alumni Magazine
Faculty Members
Over 80 faculty members contribute to Milieux’s vibrant research culture. As an interdisciplinary powerhouse, they collaborate across Arts and Science, Fine Arts and Engineering to create some of the country’s most innovative research and project teams.