Vlog 121 - The creative-led PhD
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ต.ค. 2024
- Tara enters the complex, troubling and controversial space of the creative-led doctorate. Also described as practice-led research and the artefact and exegesis PhD, Tara explores why the are difficult to complete, difficult to supervise and - yes - difficult to examine. She shows that a greater attention to the exegesis and its precise relationship with an artefact reduces some of the challenges.
She's brilliant. So refreshing to see her personality shining through when discussing research methodology.
This Professor is a godsend. Love and respect from Ethiopia.
Brilliant and so timely as I’m in the throws of writing a practice based creative writing PhD research proposal. You have made the artefact and exegesis methodology crystal clear in the nick of time and I’m so glad I found your video today. This will help enormously with the final shaping of my proposal. Thank you very much for your clarity. I especially liked the stone in the pond analogy!👍🏽😊👏🏽
Really interesting Prof. Brabazon! As an artist pursuing a PhD in art at the moment, I am in fact very sympathetic to any suspicions colleagues from other disciplines might have about ‘practice-led PhDs’. The art PhD is still a relatively young field and probably displays a lot of clumsiness from the perspective of more established disciplines with shared frameworks and methodologies that connect knowledge and make it cumulative. The key I think is where you say art may have methodological advantages that may make up for some of the cons like limited repeatability. For instance, I think art is a particularly good approach for generating research questions. It’s particularly adept at bringing into articulation and giving name to some facet of social life that may have been hitherto unnamable - in other words, art is very good at teasing out the “unknown unknowns”. It can also be very good at challenging common sense, because it often aims to estrange its subject matter such that it cannot be taken for granted. Bertolt Brecht and the Russian Formalists write much about this critical capacity for estrangement in art.
Perhaps then, one of the contributions to knowledge for an art PhD could simply be a very very provocative and original research question that can then be taken up by other disciplines.
I am about to put together a research proposal for a final course in a Creative Industries Degree. The proposd research component is to examine the process of the practical action and report on beneficial practices, and can see this would have the potential to reveal many research questions.
Wonderful vlog post, very helpful for me, a psychologist and engineer, commencing a practice based PhD, but thus far I have been quite confused about this artifact plus exegesis methodology. Great explanation, love your your style and delivery, gonna be binge watching you, better than anything on netflix :)
I appreciate the advice and glad to have heard you address synthesizing an object with the previous knowledge. My project involves a collection of museum artifacts (aka material culture) and ephemera to explaining nation-building. My reasoning to use the collection was to test the validity of the currently accepted theories. My methods will use the cited indicators and the artifacts will be coded for an analysis. The exegesis will either confirm or deny scholars speculation on nation-building. This will result in a stronger contribution as well as the stamp of approval as an expert in my field. That is a mouth full! Thank you again, Tara!
Tara thanks for being so incredibly generous and open about sharing your knowledge. I am struggling right now and only beginning my research journey. I wish to pursue this methodology and this is the most helpful resource I have found so far. Love, Light and Happiness back at ya! You Rock!
Thank you very much. This confirms and clarifies some points which have come up at our university in Hamburg (in doctoral-level artistic research).
Thanks you! I got it. I will present my concept and will take your advise. The “why” is clear and understood the irrelevance of the “how”.
Absolutely love the sonic artifacts here! It speaks by itself. Considering going for my PhD. This has definitely pushed in the right direction!!! Thank you also for the enthusiasm!!! Sooo refreshing!!!
Thankyou great information and a great personality xxx keep shining
This is so good!
Very helpful - thank you!
Would like a discussion to elaborate on what counts as knowledge in Practice-Led research. When such divergent outcomes result from assessment you could infer that this reinforces the notion of knowledge as is the case with beauty being ‘in the eye of the beholder’. A discussion on knowledge would be of value in relation to ‘value’ in itself (what, for who & why?) in relation to context, impact & its role, it’s often assumed that new knowledge must prompt new ways of thinking or doing, provoke change, could it also be of value if it warns of change, or calls us to reflect on the spiritual. I think if you ask questions of ‘knowledge’ (Gnosis) they would be just as valid replaced with the word ‘religion’ & lead to similar rhetoric. Perhaps the assessor who gave a HD was a believer as opposed to the other, an atheist. And perhaps both are valid which is a problem for P-Led research as PhD.
I wish you were my supervisor
the phd as it is constituted today is a scientific thing. the whole framing of producing knowledge is irrelevant to the arts. and at the same time artists are looked down upon because they don't have phds. the practice based or artifact exegesis phd has become a way for artists to sneak in what is really not research but is actually just work and get themselves the same accreditation, to operate on an equal footing to science or other disciplines that rigged the whole system to begin with. as far as i'm concerned it's an entirely legitimate thing to do but it needs to be more overt. there ought to exist a level of academic qualification in the arts that is equal in status to the phd in other disciplines. it should be gauged on artistic merit and not on producing knowledge.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one, Lucilius. The Doctor of Philosophy - as you can tell by the title - has its origins in the arts. The science-based - empirical methodologies emerged much later in its history. The DCA has a history from 1988, but the PhD is in the knowledge generation process whatever your discipline. Art is not the point. If you want to make art - that's great. But that is not intrinsically research. It may be - but you have to prove it. It is a methodological, epistemological and ontological question - not an art question. Art cannot be separated from ideology. It is classed, raced, gendered and sexualized. It is not an entity without politics or ideology. Neither is science. Neither is the humanities. And trust me - as a humanities-trained dean of graduate research, I would not be validating or supporting a system that actively works against some knowledge systems over others. Hope that helps - I wish you well txxx
@@TaraBrabazonLegacyContent But why can't a three year project that is concerned with the making of art be able to confer (based on quality/artistic merit) the same degree of qualification as a phd? why do the arts have to conform to these standards? knowledge creation may be relevant to the arts in the sense that one ought to research the 19th c if you are writing a novel set in that time but the novel itself, the art of it, is not research. isn't that a form of exclusion of the arts from the academy in a certain sense?
Lucilius - a PhD is about research, not art. Just like a PhD in law is about the research, not the tort. Just like a PhD in architecture is about the research, not the design. All can enable the research - but the case must be made. That is why the exegesis is required. Quality and artistic merit are highly ideological formations - and deeply historical. A PhD requires examiners to deploy clear criteria to assess the research, rather than offer a commentary on artistic merit. And Lucilius - all theses must conform to research standards. These includes research integrity and academic integrity. No one is excluding the arts from universities. What we are excluding is the assumptions that art is research - intrinsically. In all disciplines, the case must be made for the original contribution to knowledge. The PhD is a degree programme - with international examiners. Therefore standards are integral to what we do. Sorry we disagree on this one, but we cannot allow assumptions about artistic 'quality' - which are highly subjective - to be part of the awarding of degrees. This is not against the arts. The exact opposite. It is against assumptions of quality. txxx
@@TaraBrabazonLegacyContent Thank you very much for the explanation. I still can't help but feel that there is something about science (and other related disciplines) that is perfectly matched with the idea of research. It seems to me that the whole purpose of science is to perform precisely the kind of inquiry into generating new knowledge that you describe. It seems to me that the academy is designed for this purpose. The arts, especially visual arts, performance, music, etc. do not fit into this structure. I am somewhat curious about your claim that quality and artistic merit are "ideological formations". If it's not too much to ask I would appreciate either a brief summary or maybe if you can point me towards a few sources - books, papers,etc. Whatever is easier for you if you can. It seems like this statement is implying that quality or artistic merit cannot be determined somehow, which I don't agree with.
@@TaraBrabazonLegacyContent I also wanted to thank you for all these videos. They are tremendously helpful. I hope I am not taking up too much of your time with these questions.