Enhancing forensic science education and skills training with immersive and interactive technologies

Applications are invited for a self-funded, 3 year full-time or 6 year part-time PhD project.

The PhD will be based in the School of Film, Media, and Creative Technologies and will be supervised by Dr Tom Garner, in collaboration with Professor Claire Nee (School of Psychology, Sport and Health Sciences) and Dr Amy Meenaghan (Institute of Criminal Justice Studies).

The project seeks to improve upon current limitations affecting global forensic science training with the development of new approaches and strategies to capitalise on recent breakthroughs in immersive and augmented technologies. Current forensic science training primarily utilises live role-play scenarios to consolidate classroom-based learning. Scenarios often use large and expensive setups and physical props that are time-consuming to produce and arrange, limiting the frequency and portability of their use. Consequently, whilst trainees find these scenarios to be beneficial, the restricted usage limits knowledge reinforcement and negatively affects trainee confidence and initial performance. One further key issue is that trainees are restricted to experiencing each scenario once and from a single role perspective. Therefore they cannot repeat the scenario to gain a first-hand understanding of each role or how the collective works; thereby negatively affecting cooperation/teamwork effectiveness. This project aims to make significant improvements to this situation by exploiting cutting-edge multi-user virtual, augmented and mixed-reality technologies to: 1) fully reinforce the learning; 2) enable trainees ongoing access to immersive and interactive training without restrictions on time or location; 3) support multi-role understanding by enabling trainees to re-experience scenarios from every role; 4) improve higher-level/organisational understanding of professional forensic science activities; 5) facilitate greater multi-agency collaboration, using the technology to reinforce Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles. 

To realise this aim, the successful PhD candidate will conduct various research activities including, but not limited to:

• Develop a series of rapid prototypes to support stakeholder engagement and analysis
• Produce rich data sets drawn from key stakeholder analysis and involvement methods, alongside user-experience/usability testing of prototypes at various iterations of development 
• Develop a detailed theoretical, design, production and evaluation framework using stakeholder and testing data alongside secondary literature 
• Review the best pathways to implementation of such software artefacts, with focus upon integration within existing forensic science curriculums. 

Fees and funding

Visit the research subject area page for fees and funding information for this project.

Funding availability: Self-funded PhD students only. 

PhD full-time and part-time courses are eligible for the UK Government Doctoral Loan (UK and EU students only – eligibility criteria apply).

Bench fees

Some PhD projects may include additional fees – known as bench fees – for equipment and other consumables, and these will be added to your standard tuition fee. Speak to the supervisory team during your interview about any additional fees you may have to pay. Please note, bench fees are not eligible for discounts and are non-refundable.

How to apply

We’d encourage you to contact Dr. Tom Garner (tom.garner@port.ac.uk) to discuss your interest before you apply, quoting the project code.

When applying please quote project code: CCTS4551021