Reverberations

A Compendium of Key Issues in Supervising Artistic Research Doctorates

Undoing Supervision

Kerstin Mey

Doctoral programmes are growing and diversifying in the European Higher Education Area and globally. Encompassing traditional PhDs as well as structured and professional programmes, their increase is inextricably linked with the development of the knowledge economy and a concomitant focus on creativity and innovation as societal forces with the creative industries as an essential part of post-industrial, economic and social re/generation. The integration of art schools into the higher education sector since the 1970s and the growth of research and advanced programmes of study in artistic disciplines can be considered a logical response to the heightened demand for advanced knowledge and understanding, skills and experiences at the heart of the creativity imperative.

The expansion of doctoral programmes in the arts has necessitated an in depths exploration of questions around practices of development, delivery and evaluation embedded in national and

European contexts. The Advancing Supervision for Artistic Research Doctorates project brings together critical reflections, experiential learning and practical guidance at the intersection of student – research – supervisor situated within scholarly norms and pedagogic precepts, institutional practices, ethical considerations and regulatory frameworks. The work packages, explorative exchanges and multiplier events have generated deep insights into the communalities and differences of doctoral supervision in the arts not only across the eight participating university partners in seven European countries but compared to established approaches, methods and norms in other disciplines. The value of this multi-dimensional, practice-based project goes beyond the scrutiny, moulding and/or affirmation of standards in artistic doctoral research and the strengthening of respective inter/national communities of practice. Its findings probe and enrich the wider institutional and sectoral research and higher education cultures. They contribute towards the recognition of the multifaceted needs of doctoral researchers and in this way inform and enhance respective development frameworks for doctoral researchers and their supervisors, for the academic providers, for national and European higher education agencies and for respective policy frameworks.

Beyond a doubt, the arts play a significant role in addressing the existential challenges humankind and the planet are facing as a vital means to ask thought-provoking questions and explore alternative hierarchies of values and models of practice for a thriveable world. By now it has become clear that trans-, multi- and interdisciplinary inquiry and action are required to tackle the complex nexus of societal and planetary issues. This necessitates to move away from a predominant focus on STEM disciplines towards a STEAM approach in research and in education more broadly, including at doctoral level. Insights and understanding about the particular requirements of doctoral research and its supervision in the arts aid a much needed diversification of the social and scholarly ecology in higher education and support the required cross-disciplinary translation efforts and a dialogic culture.

Furthermore, the investigations in artistic doctoral research and their outcomes—embodied in both the process of making and the work(s) emerging and established—are often multi-modal. In juxtaposition to the traditional predominantly text-based articulation of the research approach, methods, procedures and its findings, the diversity of modes of representation of the creative investigation, the outcomes, insights and understanding in artistic research can stimulate a better recognition and greater appreciation of the scope, potential

A Compendium of Key Issues in Supervising Artistic Research Doctorates

Undoing Supervision and validity of non-text based, embodied and tacit knowledge more generally. The epistemological and affective contributions of thinking through art also need to be considered as part of a wider cultural shift in meaning making and knowing, away from the primacy of the written word towards a more multi-modal landscape of information, communication and comprehension catalysed by the advancement of respective digital technologies.

The exploration of questions around supervision, peer learning, student/researcher wellbeing raises important questions of ethics and aesthetics. It puts the relational focus at the centre of institutional and sectoral research cultures beyond the field of arts, which resonates with the wider and growing interest in co-creation and the knowledge common.

The Advancing Supervision for Artistic Research Doctorates project fosters the development of responsive institutional practices and progressive policy agendas more widely that stimulate criticality, epistemological pluralism and individual and collective agency. The material generated through the reflection, exchange and actions of the project consortium advances the tool kit for the design and inception of impactful doctoral programmes that are highly attuned to the diversities of needs and interests at play.