Vlog 121 - The creative-led PhD

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.

[JAsperEudaimonia]

This Professor is a godsend. Love and respect from Ethiopia.

[Rowenagander]

She's brilliant. So refreshing to see her personality shining through when discussing research methodology.

[shawanalulu]

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!👍🏽😊👏🏽

[k.rankovic]

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.

[jeanrooney]

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!

[richeco]

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 :)

[elizabethisenburg]

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!

[rodrigodelacruz]

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”.

[toddharrop]

Thank you very much. This confirms and clarifies some points which have come up at our university in Hamburg (in doctoral-level artistic research).

[juliewatson]

Thankyou great information and a great personality xxx keep shining

[FromTheHeart]

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!!!

[GaryAskwithin]

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.

[luciliusduiliuscaelinus]

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.