4. Research Proposal Process for

MAFA and PhD Students

The research proposal (which includes practice-in-progress) needs to be presented firstly to the postgraduate student staff cohort and the proposal reader(s) in a public presentation. A draft of the proposal should be sent two weeks in advance to proposal readers and at least a week in advance to the pg coordinator to send via email to the Department. Students should take on board the proposal reader(s) verbal feedback.

Signing Oversight and Research Proposals

Please note that neither the School PG administrator nor the Senior Administrative Manager (SAM) has academic oversight and, therefore, cannot sign off on academic forms.

As such, forms need to be signed off by the Departmental PG coordinator, who acts as academic oversight within the Dept (if not available then the HoD will have to sign), forms are thereafter signed by the School PG Chair Prof Samuel Ravengai (and if Prof Ravengai is not available, then either the Deputy HoS Prof Tanja Sakota or the HoS Dr Rene Smith will sign off).

Proposals and accompanying forms are to be sent in by students to Humanities Faculty Officer Mpho Ntseare (Mpho.Ntseare@wits.ac.za), with a cc. to the School PG administrator (pg.wsoa@wits.ac.za), the Departmental PG coordinator and the supervisor.

External proposal reading system – sent by student/supervisor to Faculty Officer Mpho Ntseare:

• Copy of research proposal is attached with Turnitin report (please self-enrol on the Turnitin Ulwazi course https://ulwazi.wits.ac.za/ enroll/XXYFP3, submit your proposal in MS Word format and ask your supervisor to generate a report for you);

• Statement of principles is attached and is signed by both student and supervisor;

• Research proposal submission form filled in by student and supervisor including date of public presentation (Faculty requirement):

• one proposal reader is nominated for a MAFA and two proposal readers are nominated for the PhD;

• the form is checked and signed by the Dept PG coordinator (on page 4 under ‘signature of chairperson’);

• the School Graduate Chair (Prof Samuel RavengaiSamuel.Ravengai@wits.ac.za) signs on page 3 under ‘signature of the School Graduate Coordinator’;

• on the last page, tick ‘no’ to both boxes at end of the form.

Please ensure that all docs are filled in and signed and sent in one email to School PG Chair Prof Samuel Ravengai to just check and sign off on – this helps speed up process.

The above are sent by student or supervisor to Faculty Officer Mpho Ntseare (Mpho.Ntseare@wits.ac.za) who officially submits to the proposal reader(s). Queries around proposals can thereafter be followed up with Mpho.

PG Forms can be located here: https://www.wits.ac.za/humanities/faculty-services/ postgraduate-services/

Proposal feedback from Faculty should be expected in 6 weeks (MAFA) and 8-12 weeks (PhD).

You should work on your HREC ethics application concurrently with your proposal and submit your ethics application as soon as your proposal is submitted officially.

Bev Butkow, embodied entanglements / entangled embodiements MAFA

5. Postgraduate Welcome, Orientation and Open Studios Dates 2023

Slots should be booked with the postgraduate coordinator Sharlene Khan (Sharlene.Khan@wits.ac.za) at least a week in advance. Each student is allocated up to an hour for presentation and discussion of work/ideas/proposals – students, supervisors, staff and invited guests are welcome to join the discussions. Proposals should be emailed a week in advance to the pg coordinator so it can be sent out with the invite to staff, students and guests for engagement.

Term 1: PG Welcome and Orientation

Wednesday 22 February, Thursday 23 February and Friday 24

February 2023

Open to all Hons, MA and PhD students

Term 2: Open Studios and End-of-Semester Get-together

Tuesday, 23rd - Wednesday, 24th May 2023

Open to all Hons, MA and PhD students

Term 3: Open Studios

Tuesday, 22nd August - 23rd August 2023

Open to all Hons, MA and PhD students

Term 4: Open Studios and End-of-Year Get-together

Tuesday, 10th October - 11th October 2023

Open to all Hons, MA and PhD students

6. WSOA-Fine Art Creative Research and Open Studio Programme 2023

Weekly, Thursdays, 9.00-12.00h

Venue: Es’kia Mphalele Building Seventh floor (formerly University Corner, Seventh Floor - UC-7 - glass doors when elevator opens)

Seminars, workshops and talks are directed at supporting students’ research, writing and critical thinking around artistic practice. They are voluntary and student-centred. WSOA staff and invited guests run staff-led seminars, workshops and talks, and draw strongly on their practices within the field of arts and are oriented towards practice and its relationship to artistic research, as well as field conversations. The seminar, workshop and open studio programme is devoted to research methodologies and aspects of postgraduate academic and creative research and writing, including the writing of abstracts, proposals, literature reviews, research questions, chapter outlines/mind-mapping and ethics protocols.

Students are expected to read prescribed texts and participate in the discussion. From the second semester, PG students will create the programming for the fortnightly meetings, while Open Studios will continue to be coordinated by the PG coordinator.

There are also seminars and workshops run by various Departments in WSoA and other centres on campus aimed at supporting Humanities and postgraduate students (including Faculty writing retreats and writing groups) – these are announced via email and online services so please keep abreast of your Wits mails.

Student-Centred Approach

Postgraduate studies are important moments of actualisation in a student’s experience, and it requires a new independence in research and self-articulation. It is up to you, as students, to shape your own course over the 1, 2 or 3 years of the Hons, MAFA or PhD degree and to self-organise and take ownership of the program and shared resources. The postgraduate programmes provide opportunities for the development of a shared culture amongst postgraduate students through not only its formal programme, but also other programming like the TPO and Art House exhibitions, DIVA Talks series, etc. Staff-led seminars are based on the individual practices of staff and invited guests. Workshops allow for smaller groups of students to be workshopped individually with their peers on specific focused areas of their research. Student-led sessions are opportunities for peer engagement, lateral learning and information sharing (many of your peers are already established industry professionals and knowledge producers). Thus, peer learning and knowledge sharing is considered equally valuable and students should take ownership of these sessions and mould them for the needs of their particular groups. Postgraduate sessions aim to be student-centred and focused (please refer to the Code of Conduct begun by the 2019 MA group as a code of practice for seminar sessions).

Please self-enrol on the following websites in order to get the latest information:

HMN-WSoA-Fine Art PG-2023 https://ulwazi.wits.ac.za/enroll/WJC7CN

WSOA-POSTGRAD-2023 https://ulwazi.wits.ac.za/enroll/DNLN7R

Term 1

Thursday, 2 March 2023: Working Towards an Understanding of Practice-based Research

Prof Tanja Sakota

During this seminar we will unravel the elements that constitute practicebased research. We will focus on how process becomes essential to understanding research and how artists (in the broadest sense) are also scientists, scholars, researchers and sources of knowledge production.

Thursday, 9 March 2023:

Developing a Novel Question: Considerations Towards Writing a Research Proposal

Kamogelo Molobye and Gavin Matthys (Theatre and Performance)

Research projects begin with a proposal. Candidates in pursuit of a higher postgraduate degree, such as a Masters or Doctoral Degree, are required to write a proposal for their research. A research proposal is a written document that convinces institutions of higher learning, supervisors, and/or funding bodies that your research is worthwhile. The seminar engages with matters of research preparedness to review and reinforce student learning with respect to the research process. Students will review components of research proposals. Students will be exposed to tools on developing and framing a research question. Furthermore, the seminar will discuss considerations towards the importance of context and position in research, conceptualizing realistic aims, synthesising existing scholarship, approaches to literature review, harnessing analytic strategies and referencing. Students will develop critical thinking skills in the assessment of the validity of the published literature, evidence syntheses and gap analyses.

Thursday,

16 March

2023: How to Write Abstracts

Dr Catherine Duncan (Interdisciplinary Arts and Culture)

Writing an abstract does not need to be limited to the final step of a research process. This applied workshop will be based on Kamler and Thompson’s “tiny text” approach. They argue that, while a strong abstract is essential to publishing and submission success, we can also think about it as a tool to plan and articulate ideas for a chapter or paper in the early stages of writing. The workshop is for students at any phase of the writing process. Participants will gain the most from the session by bringing current drafts with the intention to develop an abstract by the end of the morning.

Excerpts from: Thomson, P. and Kamler, B., 2012. Writing for peer reviewed journals: Strategies for getting published. Routledge, will be provided before the workshop.

Term 2

Thursday, 20 April 2023: How to Develop Research Problem and Purpose Statements

Dr

Benita de Robillard

Thursday, 23 March 2023: Practice-based Research and the Paradox of an Art School in a University

Zen Marie (Fine Arts)

The work of an artist, within an art school, within a university, is implicitly to negotiate a minefield of traps, false promises and empty expectations. Finding a space that rings true, a space that enables and is enabled by creative practice is difficult. Part of this difficulty is a precarious balancing act between practice and theory. In this seminar, I will explore these and related questions through my creative, theoretical and teaching practices, which I insist on being entangled, overlapping and interconnected.

This session will take the form of a workshop in which you will draft research problem and purpose statements (pps). Problem and purpose statements are crucial components of the research aim section of the proposal. Writing problem and purpose statements early in the research process, however preliminary they might be, will help you to make decisions about the focus and scope of your project. You will not be expected to share your writing with anyone during this workshop if you are not ready to do so.

What to bring to the workshop:

• Research journal or process diary that includes your initial ideas, questions, images, or maps/ diagrams about your prospective research project.

• One article, book, image, or object that articulates with any of the ideas or questions that you have identified in your research journal/ diary.

Thursday, 30 March 2023: Writing as Thinking Prof Pamela Nichols (Wits Writing Centre)

If writing is thinking, how can one craft and write research in a way which is true to one’s vision, creativity, and intellectual and imaginative engagement with a topic?

This session will consider:

• how to craft an independent voice and frame writing in order to join academic discussions in the particular field;

• how to promote a self-sustaining culture of writing through habits of peer consultation and review and the development, support, and sustainability of writing groups;

• our current intellectual circumstances, both local and global, and the need to find creative ways to think independently, and to participate as a global citizen in an increasingly divided and troubled world.

Thursday, 27 April 2023: Public Holiday

Thursday, 4 May 2023: The Resources (including literature) Review for my Creative Research

Dr Petro Janse van Vuuren

What are all the resources that can help me position my creative research?

How can I map them so I can navigate all their interconnectivities?

Okay, now how do I write the thing – the review?

Thursday, 11 May 2023, 09.00-10.30: Embodied Practice –Embodied Research/Embodied Practice

Neka da Costa

To live is to be embodied, and the activities of thinking, reading, writing and creating all originate, in some way, from the body. Traditional Western conceptions of knowledge venerate the capacity of the mind as superior to and separate from the body; whereas embodied research – as an antidote – acknowledges the interconnected and interdependent nature of the mind/body as an integrated and complicated vessel through which knowledge is continually generated. Therefore, embodied research is a way of searching through and with the body; asking “what can/ does the body do?” As creatives, we often centralise our own bodies or the bodies of others in our work; so it is important to critique that embodiment in relation to our sociopolitical contexts; our geographic and personal positionalities and our artistic practice; and to embrace what our own bodies can offer our inquiry. How does embodied research / embodied practice help you frame your project?

Performance and Drama for Life departments, are hosting the first Performance Studies Conference in Africa in August 2023. The conference is grounded through Uhambo, an IsiZulu word that translates to ‘a journey’. As such, the conference theme follows the phrase uhambo luyazilawula, which loosely translates to ‘a journey controls itself.’ Thus, through a recognition of mobility, journeying, movement and migration, the conference positions itself as the springboard from which contemporary creative research and scholarship about Performance Studies can be produced about Africans and by Africans.

Thursday, 18 May 2023: Creative Theorisation

Prof

Sharlene Khan

The idea of ‘creative theorisation’ has gained a lot of currency in recent years. This seminar looks at this notion from a black-African feminist perspective and the value it has for creative practitioners in today’s contemporary artistic climate.

Term 3

Wednesday, 2 August – Saturday 5 August 2023: The Performance Studies International Conference: Embodied Wandering Practices

Hosted by the Department of Theatre and Performance

Internationally acclaimed arts and research association, Performance Studies international (PSi), in partnership the Wits Theatre and

The conference, which will host traditional presentations of academic papers and panel discussions, also seeks to prioritise creative research and arts-based practices as legitimate means of knowledge production on Performance Studies methodologies in Africa, centring Wits School of Arts and Johannesburg as the creative hub of embodied epistemologies in this interdisciplinary field. The conference highlights practices of artists and scholars with Indigenous and/or migrant roots in South Africa, and it places these practices and forms of research in rich dialogue and exchange with the work of artists and scholars in Africa and from across the globe. A first for the continent, the conference will create opportunities for network development, collaborative research and artistic co-production between African countries and African universities, which will result in the development of new studies, works and networks that will outlive the conference continuing on the theme of journeying and mapping of different spaces and cultures.

***Possibility of reduced conference registration fees for WSOA students: Contact Neka da Costa (Neka.daCosta@wits.ac.za) or Kamogelo Molobye (Kamogelo.Molobye@wits.ac.za).

7. Supervision

Supervision is a key aspect of your postgraduate experience. Usually students work with one supervisor from the Department over the course of their MA and PhD studies, but in some cases, there is a second supervisor (this is usually on request when there is a specialist research expertise required). Supervision is usually structured by monthly meetings or, in some cases, scheduled according to need and availability of students and lecturers. As some staff members are employed on less than 100% basis, it is important to work around this and schedule at least online meetings or independent working times when lecturers are away. All supervisors on the program have active art and curatorial practices and this is a huge advantage to students, but timing of meetings and commitments need to be managed accordingly.

We would like to emphasize the dialogical nature of the postgraduate programmes, as one where you lead the process of your degree, supported by your supervisor. You are expected to work independently on your practice and research consistently. You need to keep up with deadlines and manage your time between seminars/workshops, your studio, research and writing, as well as your life and work commitments.

Supervision meetings and regular feedback on both your practice and your writing is a Faculty expectation – should you feel that you are not getting adequate assistance in this regard, you should speak to your supervisor in the first instance, or, thereafter, to the Departmental postgraduate coordinator. This can also be reported on in the yearly MA/PhD progress reports (which are confidential and sent directly to the Faculty administration). Your supervisor also has expectations of meeting with you regularly and seeing work - set timeframes and expectations and attempt to meet these. When you feel you are not able to, revisit these with your supervisor and renegotiate when, as they say, ‘life happens’. Be realistic around your goals - while you may feel you are ready to hand in, your creative work or writing may be saying something else. Your supervisor is there to act as a first critical response - they are not there to hamper you, but they pre- empt queries that your proposal readers/examiners may have that may prevent you from completing your degree. It is, thus, necessary for you not to ignore your supervisor’s feedback as simply opinion or commentary but the first external voice that you need to take note of as critical interrogation. Your supervisor will also fill in a yearly MA/PhD progress report - in most cases they try to give objective feedback on how your progress went that year, and if there were any delays that warranted, or if they pre-empt any warnings or extensions, then they try to explain. They are also expected to notify Faculty if there has not been sufficient engagement or progress from a student.

To make the most out of supervision meetings, you might want to consider writing a report on the meeting, what was discussed (major points) and the outcomes decided as well as the next scheduled date of meeting and email that to your supervisor for both theirs and your records. Another helpful method is to audio record – if your supervisor permits this - your consultation sessions with them so that you can hear the feedback more than once. You may be surprised how much you don’t hear the first time around. Most importantly, find a relationship that best works for you and your supervisor –remember, your supervisor wants you to succeed, but you are not their only student! You cannot expect feedback on a chapter in under two weeks (four weeks if it’s a huge chapter or multiple chapters, and and be mindful of the start and end of terms as staff are busy with UG students and examinations). You also cannot expect supervisors to be chasing after postgraduate students for work - for senior students with busy professional and home lives we try to graft a programme of support while leaving as much room for you to work, study and live. The onus is, thus, on you to remain in contact with your supervisor. The postgraduate coordinator will be in contact, however, should you begin missing important timeframes (participation in at least one open studio per semester; research not presented publicly within 3 months of registration; research proposal not submitted within 6/12 months of registration; being alerted by supervisors that no contact has been established since registration for a semester; no end-of-year report submitted) to check-in with you.