What is a PhD (for an artist and anyone) ?

 

• It is an advanced postgraduate degree involving three or more years of independent research on an original topic.

• Is carried out with the support of one or more expert academic supervisors.

• Results in a thesis that offers a significant original contribution to knowledge / new knowledge.

• Confers the title ‘Doctor’ upon successful candidates.

• Is the highest academic degree a student can achieve and is considered the de facto entrance qualification for a career in academia.

• It qualifies a person to enter into many other leadership positions or management positions in a variety of fields.

• In the arts it may entail art that relates in a very specific way to the thesis. The thesis neither describes the art nor does the artwork describe the thesis.

 

The relationship between research and arts practice in a PhD in Art in detail:

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- research into art (art history, interpretation existing work etc. the question is often about work that already exists, using a philosopher or discovery of unknown work angle, must have methodology or invent one)

 

- research through art ( writing and art each seek to answer the same question in tandem, a philosopher is used as a lens through which to examine something, must have methodology or invent new methodology for arts led or arts based research, the art making activity itself explores a new way to making, thinking, seeing etc,)

 

- research for art (research that informs arts practice, art made in response to a question, not always PhD level )

 

 

New Knowledge and what Vernon Trafford terms "doctorateness" is well explained in Vernon Trafford's book - 

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Table by Shosh Lesham, courtesy academia.edu. In Shosh's paper Doctorateness as a Threshold Concept this topic is also discussed.

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What is a NOT a PhD?

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- Desription or summary of information that already exists

- Summaries

- Reading something in a book and relaying that information again

- The term Research used in the colloquial sense of the term, which means "looking something up" and then presenting it (BA and MA level)

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