The School of Film, Music & Theatre (FMT) at UCC has a thriving, forward-looking, and diverse research culture centred on creative and performing arts.  Rooted in the strong national and international reputations for research excellence of its three constituent departments – Film & Screen Media, Music, and Theatre – the School is a major centre of research and new creative practice across the performing arts and film, especially in the future-oriented realm of academic investigation that leverages the interpenetration of research and/as practice. 

The School is motivated by the ambition to deeply influence the artistic research landscape by building on our existing strengths in culture and heritage research and socially-engaged research, while re-imagining the interface between critical thought in the arts and research through practice—from film-making, hardware and software development, and digital arts to costume design, choreography, music composition, and live performance.

The School's Centre for Arts Research and Practice (CARPE) houses research clusters and funded projects covering the whole array of arts research methods, from archival and historical approaches to community-engaged research, critical theory, media and cultural studies, performance studies, and other analytical approaches that investigate the broad realm of human creativity and sociality.  Through its interface with UCC’s Future Humanities Institute—the Arts Research & Practice Cluster—CARPE extends beyond film, music, theatre, and dance to the realms of visual arts, creative writing, architecture, digital humanities, and beyond.

Specific areas of excellence, supervision and mentorship, past and current research projects, major publications and outputs are detailed in the research pages of the three Departments.