Professor Daniel Ashton

Research groups

Research interests

• Work in the cultural and creative industries
• Artificial intelligence and creative work/industries
• Data analytics and practices for creative ecosystems
• Arts and cultural organisations

Current research

I am an interdisciplinary researcher with a Cultural Studies background engaging with and bringing together perspectives from digital culture, sociology of work and organisations, cultural policy, science and technology studies, and media industries and management. I have experience in developing mixed-methods approaches and am particularly interested in creative methods and dissemination. I enthusiastically explore approaches to research-informed teaching and create opportunities to engage students as researchers.

My research focuses on the following areas:

Work in the cultural and creative industries

I have a long-standing research focus on cultural work that explores policy contexts, organisational practices, the impact of technologies, and issues of identity. This was first developed in my PhD on digital games design titled, 'The industry of creativity: economic visions, creative subjects and innovative technologies in process' (AHRC funded at Lancaster University). This research was subsequently developed in relation to several cultural and creative industries. In 2013 I co-edited Cultural Work and Higher Education (with Dr Caitriona Noonan). Solo authored articles in this area examined “cultural workers-in-the-making” (2013) and pathways into working in the creative economy (2015).

Research and publications with Dr Karen Patel have examined social media influencers and vlogging as a forms of cultural work and in terms of gendered sites of cultural production. Aspects of this were developed with Dr Emma Agusita in the 2018-19 Unexpected Enterprises project funded by Enterprise Educators UK. Findings from this project were shared as an iDoc, a report, and published as a book chapter in Pathways into Creative Working Lives (2020; edited by Stephanie Taylor and Susan Luckman).

In 2021-22 I was the Principal Investigator on the Creative Futures Exchange project funded through a University Global Partnership Award. Developed in partnership with the University of Ghana, the project created spaces for educators, industry practitioners and students to share international experiences and address possible futures for working in the creative industries. The project centred on four online workshops exploring: civic relationships; sustainable business models and practices; platforms and technologies; and equality, diversity and inclusion (equity and belonging). Three thematic reports on internationalisation, creative industries pedagogies, and collaborative online internationalisation of learning (COIL) and a curriculum developmnent resource pack are available on the website here.

In 2023-24, I am Co-Investigator on the AHRC funded Diverse Capacities project. This project will develop and sustain new connections between local government officers, creative communities, and creative industry professionals across sectors in the region. We will showcase new models of connectivity and networking through a report, a series of creative commissions, and a public programme of in-person events and training sessions held in underserved areas across the Solent.

Artificial intelligence and creative work/industries

Since 2019 my research on working in the cultural and creative industries has connected with developments and issues relating to artificial intelligence. This has included presentations at the Cultural Histories, Creative Futures conference (Winchester, July 2019) and Artificial Creativity conference (Malmö, October 2020), and a public workshop and discussion with Dr Karen Patel as part of the University of Southampton’s Human Worlds festival (November 2020). My article ‘Creative work and artificial intelligence: Imaginaries, assemblages and portfolios’ was published in the Artificial Creativity special issue of the open access journal Transformations in 2022. This article examines sociotechnical imaginaries of artificial intelligence and creative work constructed in UK policy discourse and critically nuances this through the concepts of human and non-human assemblages and portfolio working.

Data, culture and place

Past research includes a chapter with Dr Roberta Comunian on universities as creative hubs in Creative Hubs in Question (2019; edited by Ros Gill, Andy C. Pratt and Tarek E. Virani), keynote presentations in China on entrepreneurship and culture-led urban regeneration  (Digital Suzhou and Nanjing), and a talk as part of the Southampton Institute Arts and Humanities event on ‘Culture and Post-Covid Regeneration’ available here.

Since 2019, I have been part of the research team for the Arts Council England supported Connecting Culture research project examining young people’s engagement with Southampton’s Cultural Quarter. This connects with my wider research on the UK city of culture competition, including organising a roundtable of academic and practitioner participants with Dr Toby Bennett for the Creativity, Knowledge, Cities 2017 conference.

During 2023-24, I am Principal Investigator on the Public Policy Southampton funded project, Cultural strategies, compacts and futures: The role of local government in connecting culture with place, health and the environment. This project examines how local authorities in England are aligning culture with place, health and the environment through cultural strategies and compacts. Employing a mixed methods research design and convening a knowledge exchange workshop, this project will provide analysis enabling local authorities and their membership organisation (the Local Government Association) to reflect on and explore how cultural strategies and compacts engage with place, health, environment, and other priority issues.

Developing my past projects on creative cities and placemaking/shaping, I am currently researching how data generation and analysis informs understandings of place and decision-making relating to creative ecosystems. This connects with my role as theme lead for data with Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities.

• 2022-23: Principal Investigator on the Local government data analytics for culture and creativity project funded by Southampton Institute of Arts and Humanities’ Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) funding. This project built on my experiences working in the research and evaluation group for the Southampton 2025 City of Culture bid with Southampton City Council and cultural and creative industries stakeholders (developed as an article on City of Culture data relations and frictions currently under review). It engages with policy contexts identifying the creative industries as assets to local economies and communities to address the research and policy gap around how local authorities generate and use data. The project has created a steering group with members from higher education, local government, and the cultural sector. A knowledge exchange event was held in July 2022 and further outputs are in development.
  
  
• 2023-24: Co-Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council Neighbouring Data project. Building on the creative methods developed during Feeling Towns, this 2023 project addresses key research challenges relating to the generation, connection and visualisation of data about place. It seeks to make clear, research-informed recommendations for using place-based data in towns and small cities. For more, please read the introduction to the project here.

Arts and cultural organisations

Closely linked to the above research areas, there a number of other projects focus on different dimensions of arts and cultural organisations.

I recently completed a project supported by the Winchester School of Art Strategic Research Fund examining the funding of culture/cultures of funding. This project included a workshop with academic, industry and policy participants documented in this video, presentations at several conferences and journal articles in Poetics and European Journal of Cultural Studies. It is also the basis for collaborations with Laboratory Adelaide: The Value of Culture at Flinders Research (Australia), including a presentation from Professor Julian Meyrick at John Hansard Gallery and a visit to Dr Tully Barnett in Adelaide in March 2020.

I have undertaken research on data practices of audience profiling and segmentation, and co-authored with Dr Ronda Gowland-Pryde an article in Cultural Trends in 2019.

Research projects