ARC Scholarship Position – Noise to Signal

RMIT University PhD Scholarship

Funded PhD to begin June 2026.

We invite expressions of interest for a fully funded PhD position investigating audience experience of sonic arts and sound installations in art museum and gallery contexts.

This PhD is part of the Australian Research Council (ARC)-funded project ‘From Noise to Signal: Improving Sonic Experiences in the Gallery’. The PhD candidate will be supervised by Associate Professor Lawrence Harvey and Dr Jeffrey Hannam, SIAL Sound Studios, School of Design, RMIT University.

Your Research

The research will be based in SIAL Sound Studios, School of Design at RMIT University, where acoustic models and spatial soundscapes will be produced for creative experiments using the state-of-the-art National Facility for Human-Robot Interaction Research (NFHRIR) at UNSW’s Paddington Campus. This facility houses a 256 channel speaker array and 120 microphone channels as a simulation and prototyping environment. The spatial sound models will be deployed for qualitative human research methods exploring how audiences respond to different sonic scenarios and design interventions. Your research will contribute to new exhibition design principles and industry standards for sound-based exhibitions.

You will work with a collaborative team of artists, curators, technologists, and designers, towards the goals of the ARC research project, while also developing your own dissertation and if applicable creative works aligned with the project.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The candidate will work with the ARC team on the creation of sonic models (simulations) of 4 exhibition spaces in selected art museums and galleries. The models will be used for listener research in the NFHRIR. Techniques will include, but not limited to auralisation of the gallery spaces, and multichannel spatial sound designs of the gallery environments and some sonic art works. Experience in electroacoustic composition and sound production, especially with 3D sound spatialisation technologies and techniques is essential. Experience with 3D digital modelling techniques would be an advantage, but not essential.

Relevant backgrounds include sonic arts, electroacoustic music composition, 3D audio production, digital design and music technology.

Eligibility

Due to the short time of selection, domestic Australian PhD candidates are preferred, but international applicants may be considered.

Scholarship

$39,206 per annum (2026 rate), 4 years.

How to submit expression of interest (EoI)

Please email Associate Professor Lawrence Harvey lawrence.harvey@rmit.edu.au a copy of your CV and academic transcripts by the deadline.

Successful applicants will then be invited to make a full PhD submission via the RMIT Higher Degree by Research process. For further information see https://www.rmit.edu.au/research/research-degrees

EoI Application deadline: 12 March 2026