Jake Parry to Join the Abandon Normal Research Centre Cohort

PhD candidate Jake Parry has been invited to join Unsecuring Infrastructures—the first cohort of the Abandon Normal Research Centre Workshop at the 2026 Abandon Normal Devices Festival, developed jointly by Lancaster University and Liverpool John Moores University. 

Jake will take part in a two-day festival workshop in Barnsley, joining a core interdisciplinary group with expertise in critical and responsible AI, digital materiality, surveillance, media archaeology, speculative fiction, planetary social thought, cultural policy, artistic research, publishing and experimental technology.    

The workshop will generate concepts, diagrams, scenarios and critical propositions. These will feed into a Festival Knowledge Synthesis publication, bringing together the concepts, diagrams, scenarios and critical propositions generated through the workshop.

 

Jake Parry @ IRCAM Forum, Paris

PhD candidate Jake Parry has recently returned from Paris, where he gave a paper at the prestigious IRCAM Forum, with the support of the M4C Doctoral Training Partnership.

Parry's PhD project on spatial audio is interrogating the ideological and conceptual foundations of immersion. Against a backdrop of rapid technological development in spatial audio, Parry's paper addressed convergences between art and product, examining how immersive strategies circulate between experimental practice and commercial design. 

Using gambling media as a case study, it highlighted problematic features of the immersive paradigm—illustrating how sound in this context is carefully engineered to regulate attention, sustain engagement and elicit compulsive behaviours, while simultaneously obscuring the extractive mechanics that drive commercial profit.

Prior to heading to the IRCAM Forum, Parry gave a paper at the School of Music, University of Birmingham.

Jake Parry at the IRCAM Forum 2026

Two New Midlands4Cities PhD scholars for MTIRG

MTIRG is delighted that we will be welcoming two new M4C-funded PhD candidates in electroacoustic composition in October.

Samvaran Rai's research will address 'Ambiguity in the Disembodied: A Designer's approach to Sound Dramaturgy in Electroacoustic Music,' supervised by Profs. Young and Battey.
Sam completed his MA in music, technology and innovation with distinction at DMU in 2023. He also holds an MA in film art and has received several international awards for his work.

Jake Parry will research the topic 'Moving Beyond Immersion: Developing a critical approach to spatial audio composition' supervised by John Young and Dr Christopher Haworth (University of Birmingham). Jake completed an MMus with distinction at the University of Manchester in 2022 and this year has been working on spatial audio projects at the Institute of Sonology at Royal Conservatoire The Hague.

M4C is an AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership comprised of eight universities in Leicester, Nottingham, Birmingham and Coventry/Warwick. Samvaran and Jake join a strong contingent of PhD students in the MTIRG, as well as joining our host Institute of Arts, Design and Performance.

Congratulations both!

Jake Parry

Samvaran Rai