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Creative Thesis: Exploring the Parameters of the PhD Thesis

Course Description

The Creative Thesis series is run by the Slade School of Fine Art (Dr. Sharon Morris and Dr. Hayley Newman).

This year the course will run as a series of bi-weekly workshops and seminars from October 2012 to June 2013. The series is primarily programmed on Wednesday afternoons 2.00-5.00 p.m. starting on October 3rd and will be held at the Slade School of Fine Art. Please e-mail Hayley Newman to reserve a place.

The aim of the programme is to investigate the parameters of the doctoral thesis as a Creative Thesis, and in particular doctoral research involving a practice element.  The series aims to explicate issues around research practices and methodology, focussing on the possibilities of writing and structuring a PhD thesis in its relation to studio and other forms of practice. The various backgrounds of the contributors will open up different possibilities of research methodology, exploring relations between theories and practice, experimenting with modes of writing and the relation between the visual and the verbal. In response to the new practice-led PhD option at the Slade this series will also address curatorial practices and the exhibition or staging of the work of art as forms of a research thesis. The series will also explore modes and genres of creative writing that address critical writing through a self-reflexive practice, dove-tailing with the new UCL Humanities PhD mode of thesis, Creative Critical Writing.

This year we are again inviting guest writers, artists, curators and publishers, in addition to faculty from the Slade and UCL to run the Creative Thesis sessions. The programme opens with guest curator Raimundas Malašauskas  from Lithuania who will be talking in particular about his experience of Documenta 13, Kassel. Artist, performer and author of the novella Common, Dr. Hayley Newman (Slade School) will then run a session on the parameters of a practice-based PhD research thesis. This will be followed a writing workshop focussing close attention on writing an abstract and structuring argument by Dr. Sharon Morris, (Slade School) author of poetry collections False Spring and Gospel Oak and papers on the philosopher C.S. Peirce. Artist and writer Yve Lomax (Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths Art Writing programme), author of Writing the Image and Sounding the Event, and publisher Copy Press, will focus on writing practice as philosophy. Sally O'Reilly, writer, critic, editor and co-curator of the Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition Magic Show, will finish the first term with a writing workshop on ventriloquism and objects.

Each session is focused on the pedagogy of practice and many of the workshops ask you to write in situ and to respond directly to issues raised in discussion.  Please bring with you hard copy writing materials, pen/pencil and paper. Some of the workshops will also include the opportunity for you to bring short pieces of text addressing particular issues, including problems you may have with thesis writing. There will also be visits to external art venues to discuss curatorial practice and the staging of an event in the spring term addressing issues of research and public engagement.

Researcher Development Framework Categories

A3) Creativity
D2) Communication and dissemination

Course Recommended for

This course is particularly relevant to the following groups:

• 1st Year Research Students
• Students in Arts & Humanities
• Students in the Built Environment

Course Organisers

• Organiser - Dr Sharon Morris - (Slade School of Fine Art)
  
• Organiser - Dr Hayley Newman - (Slade School of Fine Art)
  
• Administrator - Ms Kasia Bronk - (Graduate School)