The Research Student Division is extremely pleased to recognise the accomplishments of Dr Soonsun Hwang and Dr Faredah al-Murahhem.
15 Aug 2013
The Research Student Division is extremely pleased to recognise the accomplishments of two students who have had their PhDs conferred in this academic year.
Dr Soonsun Hwang’s thesis Horang-i (The Korean Tiger): Portraying the Tiger in East and West through Theoretical Study and Practical Work, supervised by Professor George Hardie and Sue Orton-Flynn, is a dissertation in two parts. The first part gives historical, cultural, and theoretical contexts to the three studio works and explains the place of the Horang-i in Korean history and culture. The second part is comprised of three multimedia packages, which are part of the practical work and all related in some way to the Horang-i. In the first package, Hey! Magpie, Give Me an Egg, the Horang-i character is depicted as greedy, ferocious and silly. The “silly Horang-i’” characterisation is the basis of the second multimedia package, Horang-i with a Silly Face. The third, Let’s Go to Camp ABC, is an educational multimedia package for children linking pictographs with visual images, Chinese script characters, and written and spoken Korean: it introduces a gentle Horang-i. Since completing her thesis, Soonsun has returned to Korea and resumed her academic post in the Department of Design at Sookmyung Woman’s University in Seoul.
Dr Faredah al-Murahhem’s thesis Behind a Roshan: Visualizing the Roshan as an Architectural Element in Traditional Domestic Interiors, supervised by Professor John McKean, Professor Jonathan Woodham and Dr. Geoffrey King, is focused on the ‘roshan’ – an old term used for a wooden projected window within the Islamic world. Faredah’s thesis examines the roshan as a timeless architectural element and focuses on the roshan’s habitation and the experience of being within it. It also tells the story of its terminology and its historical background, both within its original milieu and beyond. As a conclusion to her research work at the University of Brighton, Faredah mounted an exhibition, Lost Heritage: A Memorial to Traditional Houses of Makkah, from 6–16 November 2007 at Grand Parade, which included an afternoon symposium on Friday, 9 November. Talks focused on the traditional houses of Makkah and their counterparts in Yanbu, an important port in the Red Sea and on the route of the Hajj. It is the first time that these images of the architectural fabric of the old city of Makkah have been exhibited out of Saudi Arabia. Faredah has now resumed her academic career in at Ummqura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia.
