Clare Daněk awarded Research as Art prize for embroidery piece documenting PhD journey

Congratulations to Clare Daněk on achieving the external national award in the 2021 Research As Art competition for her work ‘Thinking through making: Stitching my way through a PhD’.

Clare Daněk’s research explores amateur craft learning in open access community spaces and the home. Clare taught herself embroidery and applique skills to create a daily ‘stitch journal’ to document and reflect her learning journey. Each 5cm square details some aspect of PhD life: celebrating successes, battling with hard thinking, trying to express ideas with clarity, or describing some of the more challenging moments on her journey.

Research as Art is an annual competition at Swansea University which has been running since 2009. The competition invites students, researchers and university staff to convey and present their work in new ways, refining their research to one picture and a 150-word description. Research as Art is as much about the story behind the submission, presenting unique perspectives on what it means to be a researcher.