researCh training in the Creative arts and designdisciplines’, a term common in scandinavian contexts (Chapter 4). For the purposes of this
discussion, it seems more useful to maintain rather loose boundaries between these areas, than
to try and impose strict definitions.
3 i think Bell reads rather more into my statement about the nature of research than was there.
in other respects this paper speaks a lot of good sense about practice- led research, though to
conclude on the inevitability of auto- ethnography as the method for practice- led research seems
rather restricting.
4 Williams was of course talking about a very different context, but the wording i find very useful
here.
5 i hope this definition makes it clear why i find attempts to describe the arts- based phd in terms
of percentages of theory and practice unsatisfactory.
6 of course research and writing are practices too, though i have avoided that formulation here
for the sake of simplicity.
7 i have previously defined methodology in the following way: ‘the interrelationship between
the theoretical and the practical aspects of doing research – the thinking one does about the
significant choices and actions that constitute the research act’ (newbury 2003).
8 This is clearly the same argument that underlies the discussion of mode 2 research (Chapter 4)
just seen from the other direction, wherein knowledge and creativity are perceived as crucial to
society and the economy.
9 it is beyond the focus of this chapter, but Torsten Kälvemark’s discussion of the norwegian
Fellowship, which provides a parallel route to achieving the equivalent of doctoral standing,
provides an interesting alternative. my own view is that whilst these schemes do indeed have an
important place, they are not a substitute for doctoral research in the creative arts and design,
which remains an important development in its own right. Furthermore, as Kälvemark points
out later in his chapter, there is a danger in developments such as the professional doctorate of
reinforcing the divide between thinkers and doers.
10 similarly, the anthropology department at harvard offers a ‘practice- based’ phd in social
anthropology (with media) for which the submission includes ‘original creative work ... in an
audiovisual medium’ see http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~anthro/grad_media.htm (accessed 2
February 2010).
11 see http://www.gold.ac.uk/pg /mphil- phd- visual- sociology/ (accessed 2 February 2010).
12 The person who made this remark was david Campany, though i can no longer remember the
specific occasion.
13 The Center for ethnography at the university of California, irvine, has a research theme
considering the methodological exchange between design and ethnography http://www.socsci.
uci.edu/~ethnog/theme4.htm (accessed 2 February 2010).
14 see Chapter 20 for a more extended discussion, with examples, of specific art phd writing
practices.
15 desmond Bell offers what seems to me one productive line of development in his argument
for creative practice research as implying a form of auto- ethnography. he cites david davies
Art as Performance on the epistemological question at its centre: ‘the relationship between the
generative act that brings a work into existence and the receptive act that is a proper appreciation
of that work’ (davies 2004: 26).
16 The focus group took place in 2008 at the university of leeds but was organized as part of a
research project at the esRC- funded national Centre for Research methods at university of
southampton.
17 i recently led a funded research project to develop resources for research training around
ethics; details can be found online at: http://www.biad.bcu.ac.uk/research/rti/ethics/ (accessed 2
February 2010).
18 my comparison here seems to bear some relationship to the distinction michel de Certeau’s
describes between the map and the tour (de Certeau 1984).