Hi Marion
First of all, well done to get so close to handing in your PhD thesis! Do
you have a viva? I remember being petrified when I was approaching mine,
and having warm support from people like Jack on the other side of the
world, reminding me that I knew my topic probably better than anyone else
so 'chin up'!!! I hope you get the same sound but extremely supportive
examining that my thesis received from Jean McNiff. All the best.
On your topic, though, I do identify with what you're saying. I did a
paper at HERDSA in Perth (2002) with a guy called Geof Hill, I'd never met
Geof face-to-face but we'd communicated by email a few times and we co-
wrote a paper challenging traditional forms of thesis presentation. Geof
does performance cabaret as part of his academic pursuit, and I think was
successful in having that type of output recognised in his own PhD. I can
post you a copy of the paper if you contact me off-list
([log in to unmask]). I'm also aware that Di Challis (was Thompson) did
a CD-Rom as part of her PhD material - both these writer/performers are
Australian. And I've heard of someone (don't know name) who wanted to
combine investigation of English literary forms (in this case the novel)
with psychology in, I think, a Masters thesis? She wrote a novel about
someone experiencing psychological distress and had that assessed as the
thesis. So there ARE examples out there. On the downside, though, my
friend Neil Bruce (no relation) wanted to do his action research PhD on
how to improve road safety among young people, incorporating a stage
show. Neil used to be Music Advisor to schools locally. In the end he
gave up the stage show idea, which is a great pity - I think he got enough
expressions of discouragement not to want to proceed with the work.
When you've got your PhD out of the way, maybe then you will have the
energy to start tackling the injustice of measuring oranges by the
standards of apples! Or even worse, measuring oranges by the standards of
pterodactyls...;-) Any time you want to do a joint paper challenging
these issues, I'm your partner!
Pip
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