Hi all,
in my (limited) experience of doing a doctorate (in progress), it is
essential to have supervisors who are pedagogically sound in all the
relevant practices of the doctorate (designing, teaching designing,
supervising research and writing research) for students to produce
relevant scholarly knowledge. It's up to the student and supervisor/s
together to decide in which fields to locate the research, and this
is no easy task for design which is in the process of negotiating
disciplinary boundaries. However, there are pedagogic models of co-,
joint and collaborative supervision that might provide students
access to a number of people with skills in a range of these
practices, other than having one supervisor skilled in all.
In my doctorate about women and design scholarship (in process), I
have a supervisor well regarded and widely published in the fields of
Adult education, feminist research, doctoral pedagogies and research
writing (she was a geography teacher at schools in a previous life),
and a co-supervisor with a PhD in design education, and with many
years of teaching under her belt (she was a well regarded
professional designer in a previous life).
Together (all three of us) work my thesis to produce a rigorous,
relevant outcome that will speak to scholars in design and other
professional practice fields. It is a text-based PhD, and I draw on
my knowledge/skill as a graphic designer to lay out the text to
rhetorically support my argument/s. So while the focus is not on
designing, designing fundamentally informs my PhD.
One of the reasons I chose the research topic and also the
supervisors, is as Katherine says, there are few graphic design PhDs
in Australia, and noone in my vicinity who could have supervised this
project, so I have two supervisors who together provide what is
required. I also suggest it's possible (and desirable) in the interim
in Australia for students to seek supervisors in fields that are
empathetic to design, who also offer experience in other practices,
particularly those of doctoral pedagogies, so students can learn how
to locate the work, structure an argument, and write in a convincing
and appropriate way and at doctoral level. After all, in addition to
the thesis/artefact itself, the outcome of a PhD is the production of
a researcher with the capacity to conduct and disseminate independent
and scholarly research.
cheers, teena
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