Dear Martin — and All,

Some time back, Lars Albinsson drew my attention to Nick Sousanis’s (2015) remarkable book, Unflattening. This is the published version of Sousanis's (2014) EdD dissertation at Columbia University Teacher’s College. The dissertation took the form of drawn comics. (Sousanis prefers the term “comics” to the term “graphic novel.”) The book is a published version of the dissertation without major changes. The dissertation was accepted for the EdD degree (Doctor of Education), not the PhD degree (Doctor of Philosophy). This may be a minor difference in some respects, but it is a key point of difference with respect to some of the comments I will make.

I posted the dissertation abstract to the list, and followed it with a few comments. Martin Salisbury and others raised some important questions. To answer Martin’s questions requires a serious and considered post on the nature of art, philosophy, research, and the PhD. This is a long post. If you aren’t interested, delete it. Links in this post allow each reader to examine the material. Form your own judgement.   

1) Nick Sousanis’s Dissertation

Here is Nick Sousanis's dissertation abstract:

—snip—

Sousanis, Walter Nickell.
Unflattening: A visual-verbal inquiry into learning in many dimensions 
Teachers College, Columbia University, 2014.

While the importance and effectiveness of visual thinking and multimodality in teaching and learning have been demonstrated and discussed at great length, for the most part it has still only been talk. Academic discourse remains a text-based endeavor at all levels. Our bias for what serious thinking looks like runs deep to the roots of Western culture. Images are relegated to the sidelines, at best used as example or ornament, but never seen as complete on their own and always expendable. 

By undertaking this philosophical inquiry entirely in the visual-verbal medium of comics, I seek to challenge the very forms in which we construct knowledge and demonstrate the utility of comics as a powerful tool for thought in the scholarly sphere. (Note, while the terms "graphic novel" and "sequential art" have come into fashion, I continue to refer to this work as a "comic" or a "comic book.") Here, images are not subservient to the text; rather, ideas are embodied through the inextricable partnering of words and pictures, in which neither has the upper hand. Through both its form and content, the work asks, in relying on the verbal as the sole tool for conducting serious study, what possibilities are we missing? What avenues for discourse emerge when we embrace a multiplicity of approaches for making meaning? 

The work weaves its argument through an interdisciplinary framework - drawing on science, philosophy, art, literature, mythology - and employs the very means by which we see as metaphors for considering new approaches to how we think and how we learn. By integrating the different views from our two eyes, we create perspective. Similarly, by making an observation a half year apart on the earth's orbit around the sun, we make "two eyes" to find the depths to the stars. Perception is thus not only this distance between, but the way in which our movement in space changes our relationship to our environment. It is an active process of constantly evaluating how things appear and incorporating a multitude of views to expand our understanding. In contrast to this is the static contraction of sight I call "flatness." Taking my cue from Herbert Marcuse's notion of "one-dimensionality," I see flatness as conforming to a narrowness of thought aligned in a single dimension. Edwin A. Abbott's  Flatlandprovides a more literal metaphor. A flatlander's inability to fathom the concept of "upwards" suggests that perhaps we too are limited in our sight and may be unable to see beyond the boundaries of our current frame of mind. The work challenges the fixed viewpoint, recognizing that the Copernican revolution is never finished. 

—snip—

2) Ken Friedman’s earlier post:

When Lars Albinsson’s drew our attention to the thesis as a “graphic novel as dissertation,” I made these comments:

Ken Friedman wrote:

—snip—

This thesis is NOT a “graphic novel as dissertation.” It is a doctoral dissertation (doctoral thesis) in graphic form.

There is a difference. This work isn’t a novel. It is a thesis. According to the reviews, it addresses important philosophical issues, and Columbia University examined and judged this work as a thesis, not as a novel and not as art. What made it unusual was the form it took — but the form includes the key element that we examine in all theses, words. 

Most dissertations or theses include both words and images — in some cases, the images involve figures or diagrams, in other cases, they involve illustrations, charts, chemicals, other other ways to show the processes and objects under consideration. I have not yet read the book version for  myself, but I observe that it is 208 pages long. Of these, 168 pages are illustrated, so despite the use of illustration as a central aspect of this work, there must be more than illustrations. I have seen a few sample pages, and most of these take the form of words and image in unison.

—snip—

3) Martin Salisbury’s Reply and Questions

In response, Martin Salisbury wrote:

—snip—

Nick Sousanis’s own abstract which you helpfully forwarded helps to clarify key issues which I feel your previous message on the subject demonstrated some misunderstanding of.

You say:

“What made it unusual was the form it took — but the form includes the key element that we examine in all theses, words.”

“Most dissertations or theses include both words and images — in some cases, the images involve figures or diagrams, in other cases, they involve illustrations, charts, chemicals, other ways to show the processes and objects under consideration.”

This is misleading. The key issue here is not the fact that this thesis includes words or that other theses include images and diagrams. It is the relationship between them that is crucial. The use of ‘illustrations’ and diagrams within a word-based scientific thesis is a world away from a piece of creative ‘writing’ (for want of a better term- in picturebooks we speak of ‘picturebook-making) such as this. Sousanis’s outcome expresses itself through a synthesis of word and image. The images are not saying, “Here’s a picture to help you understand”. Often, they are saying something different from the words. The meaning emerges from the counterpoint between the two. As in a picturebook, neither of these modes would make sense individually, seen in isolation from the other. This is a creative, expressive outcome, speaking to us in multi modal form.

A graphic novel (or ‘comic’ – since Sousanis prefers the term) can exhibit multiple variations of word to image ratio/ proportion. And of course the boundaries are being pushed at all the time. Brian Selznick’s 'The Invention of Huge Cabret' delivers its narrative in the form of lengthy passages of words, interspersed seamlessly with passages expressed entirely through wordless visual sequence. 

You seem to be at pains to point out, Ken, that (forgive me) ‘there are words here, so it’s OK’. But it is important to understand that, in the case of this thesis, they will have little meaning on their own and are certainly not the key to understanding. 

Many graphic novels are ‘silent’, i.e. wordless. This then begs the question, can we envisage a wordless graphic sequence as a PhD thesis? If not, why not? And if not, how would we determine what the appropriate word-image balance is?

I would be fascinated to hear your views.

—snip—

4) Nick Sousanis’s Unflattening: Publisher Web Site and Other Resources 
 
Martin raised valuable and perceptive questions. The book helped me to reflect on some issues, while raising profound new questions on others. I’ve been giving this deep thought for three months. Before offering my thoughts, I suggest that those who want to know more for themselves look at the book if possible. If you don’t have access to the book and don’t want to buy it, there are useful resources available on the web.

Harvard University Press maintains a web site for Unflattening:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674744431

There are also links to an interview with Nick Sousanis at The Paris Review:

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/07/20/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis/

A one-page comics presentation in The Boston Globe about the ideas in the book:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/05/23/upwards-when-think-got-all-figured-out-thinking-stops/YCY2Tidz8HMbEEkiFrvESM/story.html

and a link to Sousanis’s own web site, Spin, Weave, and Cut:

http://spinweaveandcut.com

A careful reading of these materials and a bit of diligent Googling will disclose a great deal of information. Wikipedia also has decent articles on most things to do with comics, probably due to the immense fan base for the genre. Most of the artists and writers I discuss here are the authors or subjects of several books, many available through Amazon, and there seem to be more-or-less reliable Wikipedia artists on most of them. More important, several are covered in major university archive collections for people who wish to do deeper research. 

5) Harvard University Press Book Description

Here is the book description from the Harvard University Press web site:

—snip—

The primacy of words over images has deep roots in Western culture. But what if the two are inextricably linked, equal partners in meaning-making? Written and drawn entirely as comics, Unflattening is an experiment in visual thinking. Nick Sousanis defies conventional forms of scholarly discourse to offer readers both a stunning work of graphic art and a serious inquiry into the ways humans construct knowledge.

Unflattening is an insurrection against the fixed viewpoint. Weaving together diverse ways of seeing drawn from science, philosophy, art, literature, and mythology, it uses the collage-like capacity of comics to show that perception is always an active process of incorporating and reevaluating different vantage points. While its vibrant, constantly morphing images occasionally serve as illustrations of text, they more often connect in nonlinear fashion to other visual references throughout the book. They become allusions, allegories, and motifs, pitting realism against abstraction and making us aware that more meets the eye than is presented on the page.

In its graphic innovations and restless shape-shifting, Unflattening is meant to counteract the type of narrow, rigid thinking that Sousanis calls “flatness.” Just as the two-dimensional inhabitants of Edwin A. Abbott’s novella Flatland could not fathom the concept of “upwards,” Sousanis says, we are often unable to see past the boundaries of our current frame of mind. Fusing words and images to produce new forms of knowledge, Unflattening teaches us how to access modes of understanding beyond what we normally apprehend.

—snip—

6) Ken Friedman Comments

To start, I was partly mistaken in my reading of the thesis abstract. The thesis nearly entirely takes the form of comics. This is indeed “verbal-visual,” but some of the words I’d expect in a thesis are missing. In a sense, we are talking about four different kinds of work here. They occupy one single volume, but I respond to them in four slightly different ways. If we also consider the nature of a PhD thesis, there is a fifth series of issues that bear consideration.

6.1) Unflattening is a work of art. 
6.2) Unflattening is a work of art and philosophical inquiry in the form of comics.
6.3) Unflattening is a philosophical inquiry in the form of comics.
6.4) Unflattening is an EdD thesis. 
6.5) Unflattening is not a PhD thesis.
6.6) Conclusions

Here are my views on these issues:

6.1) Unflattening is a work of art. 

Unflattening is a serious and intelligent work of art. It is thoughtful and intriguing. I’d argue that it is a good work of art, but this post is not an essay about art or art criticism.

6.2) Unflattening is a work of art and philosophical inquiry in the form of comics.

Since at least the 1960s, comics have been a forum of artistic and philosophical inquiry. The first such comic that I recall was Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Wart-Hog. Wonder Wart-Hog always had special appeal for me. This was probably the influence of the Michael Flanders and Donald Swann song, The Warthog. I had the great pleasure to hear them live on broadway when I was a youngster, and The Warthog always stuck in my mind.

http://www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fas/bestiary_warthog.html

You can hear the song on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpfeCpJIn0w

While this is a digression, it hints at the wide span of cultural references that somehow rolled into the genre of comics during the 1960s. A rich confluence of issues and ideas met in comics, the underground press, ‘zines, and the other phenomena summarised by the label “counterculture.” 

Let’s get back to “The Hog of Steel.” Here is his bibliography --

Wonder Wart-Hog Bibliography:

http://www.nmia.com/~vrbass/wart-hog/

Wonder Wart-Hog and the other comic protagonists of the 1960s and 1970s filled a significant role in the culture of the era. This role was fluid, lying somewhere on an indefinable spectrum between the aphoristic probes of Friedrich Nietzsche and the antics of the Marx Brothers. Perhaps it was Nietzsche’s “philosophy with a hammer,” but underground comics placed Nietzsche's hammer in the hands of the Three Stooges for a slapstick comedy of bonks, boinks, and eye pokes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk6_7DTVN8Q

Gilbert Shelton’s other great comic creation was the trio known as The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, three hapless idiots who spent half their lives high on drugs and the other half looking for drugs. Naive, irascible and jolly by turns, basically good-natured, they were the hippie counterculture answer to Shakespeare’s Falstaff:

“ … If sack and sugar be a fault,
God help the wicked! if to be old and merry be a
sin, then many an old host that I know is damned: if
to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's lean kine
are to be loved.”

That was Falstaff speaking, but it could have been Fat Freddy. Freddy lacked Shakespeare's poetic range, but he and his brothers reflect the down-to-earth comedic nature of Falstaff’s friends, Nym, Bardolph, and Pistol:  jolly fellows, self-serving and petulant; boisterous cowards who mask their fear with bravado; grifters and con-men. 

The Freak Brothers are comedic protagonists whose occasionally lovable vices see them triumph over — or at least survive — the predicaments they create for themselves. With the advent of film, mass-market newspapers, and comic books, the 20th century was an especially good time for comedic protagonists. The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers were such characters, as was Harold Hedd, the laid-back Canadian stoner protagonist of cartoonist Rand Holmes. 

The late 1960s saw an explosion of creativity in the underground comics of the San Francisco Bay Area. Zap Comix came to stand for much of the development, featuring such cartoonists as Wes Clay Wilson, Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, Art Spiegelman, Trina Robbins and others. 

These comics fascinated me, and I had a large collection of them. (My collections went into a collection of underground press materials at the University of California at San Diego and the Alternative Traditions in Contemporary Art archives at the University of Iowa.)

For different reasons, I was also interested in superhero comics published by the Marvel Group, especially the work of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and the great Jack Kirby — who later left Marvel to work at DC. This collection of “real” comics did not survive — I chopped many of them into small volumes in the early 1970s for a series of small books titled Homage a Dieter Rot. (Many example of the small books survive in the ATCA collection at Iowa.)

I haven’t thought about comics for some time. Nick Sousanis is quite right to see these as different to graphic novels. The ethos of comics is quite different. Comics generally function as serials. They often create a universe of characters who move from one adventure to another, across volumes in a series, and across different series. Ongoing conversations emerge between and among characters, and these conversations and plot lines generate and interweave ideas from different contexts, much as philosophy does.

The nature of comics is highly individual and contextual. It depends on the creativity and thinking of the artists and writers who develop them, and the ideas these people bring to the world. There are some good comics sites worth exploring:

The Comics Journal

http://www.tcj.com

The Comics Grid

http://www.comicsgrid.com

Comics Beat

http://www.comicsbeat.com

Toonopedia

http://www.toonopedia.com/index.htm

The comics that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s are also related to the world of ‘zines — a term that began in the fanzines of the science fiction and comics world, but exploded to become a significant medium in their own right. I won’t discuss ‘zines here. Teal Triggs’s (2010) book on Fanzines offers an excellent, comprehensive account. 

Graphic novels are a significant medium in their own right but they are a different genre. At least they feel so to me. The first great graphic novelist in North America was Lynd Ward. I once owned a copy of his first great work, God’s Man. You can see six of his novels in a recent reprint (Ward 2010) together with an essay by Art Spiegelman. Speigelman (2003) himself is the author of the masterpiece Maus, a graphic novel that is also a comic. First serialised as a comic, it has been collected in several comprehensive editions, demonstrating the power of comics as a literary and visual art form that can deal with the deepest and most difficult issues of philosophy, ethics, and behaviour. Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize for Maus as a special citation in the category of “letters.”

In my view, comics function as works of art, and many of these works constitute challenging and responsible philosophical inquiry. Unflattening is such as work.

6.3) Unflattening is a philosophical inquiry in the form of comics.

Works of art often generate philosophical inquiry. It also seems fair to say that they represent and embody philosophical inquiry, and in different ways to the kinds of inquiry we can speak or write, hear or read. We must ask how works of art generate or embody inquiry when we speak of works of art as works of philosophical inquiry. Jerry Diethelm recently posted a comment to this list from The Stone in the New York Times taken from an article by the philosopher Alva Noë. It is titled “What Art Unveils.”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/what-art-unveils/

Noë — a professor of philosophy at the University of California — has written an interesting book developing these themes. Noë's Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature asks what it is that art can disclose to us about ourselves that gives it power.

Alva Noë’s web site:

http://www.alvanoe.com

In my view, the key to this issue is hermeneutical engagement — the meeting of worlds along what Hansjörg Gadamer described as the hermeneutical horizon. It is along this horizon that the world of the work of art meets the world of the viewer or reader. The one world is the world opened by the artist, but this world is not limited to the artist’s world and understanding. The world of the art work engages with the world of the viewer or reader. This interaction is complex and subtle. Just as this post is not a discussion of art, neither do I intend to explain hermeneutics here. (For more on hermeneutics, see Anthony Thiselton 1980, 2009). Hermeneutic inquiry takes place at the meeting of two horizons, perhaps more.

In this sense, a work of art constitutes generative inquiry. This has a different nature than other kinds of inquiry. I will return to this point later. The open and generative quality of art places it in the context of discovery rather than the context of justification. This issue is vital to the distinction between artistic inquiry and those forms of generative philosophical inquiry and research to which art contributes, as contrasted with other forms of research. It is specifically distinct from those forms of philosophical inquiry and research that require the demonstration of valid truth claims, including empirical claims, logical claims, or mathematical claims.

In this respect, compare Unflattering with Pablo Picasso’s Suite Vollard. The Vollard Suite is one of the great art works of the Twentieth Century (See: Bolliger 1977; Coppel 2012). It is an astonishing masterwork that encapsulates and summarises a history of art as Picasso saw it in the 1930s. In these works, Picasso gives free rein to the plastic sense of line in space. He collapses an archaeology of time into the frame of each etching in the suite. There isn’t a word in the whole of it other than the titles. Rather, there is an astonishing, generative inquiry that narrates time and history, space and myth. Despite this, no one can say what Picasso “meant” or had to say. 

In an earlier thread, I described Picasso as a magician. I do not describe all artists as magicians, nor do I describe art as a form of magic. I describe Picasso as a magician, an artist of astonishing talent and applied genius who developed his skills with relentless passion over a long life. Picasso saw himself — perhaps correctly — as the towering artistic genius of the century. In his own view, only Matisse was his equal, “In the end, there’s only Matisse,” he said. It was his view that anyone to paint after Picasso would have to climb over him — something he believed to be impossible. 

Picasso said, “Others seek, I find,” asserting that he could achieve what others could not. In his own view, this was due to an innate quality of his person. If you don’t like to think of Picasso as a magician or sorcerer — a brujo, to use a word he would have understood — then you need some word to distinguish what he was. Many artists are good and some even great. Picasso was beyond the ordinary definition of “greatness” for an artist. In my view, Picasso was one of the few artists who was as great an artist as he believed himself to be. His character was flawed and his human qualities left much to be desired. His art remains magnificent. But Picasso’s assertion has an implication: we can learn to do philosophy, mathematics, or chemistry, we can learn to write and to express ourselves clearly, we can learn to drive a car. We may not be able to perform these practices at the level of the great masters, but we can do well enough — and some of us in every generation will become masters. No one can learn to be Picasso. We can witness Picasso’s greatness, but the greatness of Picasso’s art arises from a depth of being that transcends ordinary mastery.  

The full majesty of Picasso’s art comes into view in Suite Vollard. To “read” the Suite Vollard, each witness must enter its world, meeting it along the hermeneutical horizon between the work and the witness to play a role in interpreting its depths and mysteries. Take a look at one of the prints owned by the Tate titled 

Faun Revealing a Sleeping Woman (Jupiter and Antiope, after Rembrandt)

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/picasso-faun-revealing-a-sleeping-woman-jupiter-and-antiope-after-rembrandt-p11360
 
To illustrate what I mean when I speak of encountering a generative work at the hermeneutical horizon between the worlds of the work and my own worlds, permit me to disclose a few passages at the surface of my encounter with this work:

In this single image, we see the faun, a satyr, reaching out to draw the drapery off a bed where a naked woman sleeps. But the satyr is not simply or only a satyr. He is a God, Zeus, Jupiter, and the sleeping woman is a goddess, Antiope. The satyr is a God, the satyr is Picasso himself. The artist, unclothing a naked woman, reaches out to grasp her. The satyr echoes the Minotaur, another Picasso stand-in who appears in many images within the Suite. He reaches out toward the woman, but he doesn't touch her. He devours her with his sight, the magical eye, Picasso’s eye, and Picasso’s hand invents sight and vision. Picasso is hungry. He eats, but he is never filled. Antiope is the mother of Amphion, founder Thebes, the city where Oedipus will come to be the king. Theseus, a future king of Athens who slays the Minotaur while still a prince, will become the friend of Oedipus. Theseus captures another Antiope, the only Amazon ever to wed a man. Theseus later slays Antiope when he weds Phaedra. This is one layer of myth and metaphor.

But it’s not all. It’s never all. Look at the light coming from the left. This is Mediterranean light, sharp, bright, relentless. But a dim glow lurks in this light, a hint of Rembrandt’s light. 

Why Jupiter? Why not Zeus, the original Greek God who came to Antiope as a satyr? Each of these characters carries a trail of myth and meaning. The trails lead back to the sources of myth and legend. They lead back to all the commentators who describe and discuss these myths and legends. Picasso filters these through his memory, his eye, his hand, but each trail also goes around Picasso to its own history. 

The blending and weaving of horizons doesn’t stop here. It involves more than Picasso’s meanings, intended, half-intended. It also involves my meanings, intended, half-intended, understood, forgotten, meaning leaping like a Minoan bull dancer just beyond my reach. What do I know that Picasso didn’t? What can I remember that he could not? 

The building in which this goddess sleeps isn’t Greek. The arches reveal another world. This is a world where light of Northern Africa shines down on Mersault as he walks along the beach. In yet another world, it is the light beyond Plato’s cave. 

Antiope is the daughter of Asopus, the river god. Each river has a name. Each river has its god. The names are trails into history and time. Every person who come to this print brings a trail of names, places, memories, experiences. This is the generative power of art, multiplied this by all the etchings in the suite. In exactly this way, each generative experience has power beyond words. The experience is deeper than words can hold.

Returning to Unflattening, it is worth considering the way in which Nick Sousanis set out to generate ideas. One of his stated goals was to do something that words cannot, transcending words by weaving ideas and concepts into a skein of meaning. Sousanis does not do this in the way that Picasso did. He does it to different ends. Sousanis’s Unflattening is generative with an eye toward philosophy rather than myth and history. Nevertheless, just as it is with Faun Revealing a Sleeping Woman, the generative, existential capacity of the work comes inextricably bound with creative ambiguity. I will discuss this issue later in relation to research.

Martin speaks about the ratio of words to images, asking whether we can shift the boundaries. This is one of Sousanis’s goals. We see this effort at different times in history, and the interplay of word and image has always been a central fulcrum in human narrative. 

Consider, for example, medieval emblemata. Emblemata were printed sheets with images and words that common people could buy in the early days of printing. Even though many who bought emblemata could not read, they could understand the stories through a sense of visual literacy and their knowledge of shared stories common across the culture in which they lived.    

The work of Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher is another excellent example. All of Kircher’s encyclopaedic works were richly illustrated. The interplay of text and image created a fascinating kind scholarship (See: Findlen 2004; Glassie 2012; Godwin 1979, 2015). This was also the case for Diderot’s great encyclopaedia, with a dozen volumes of illustrations bringing to life the text by showing what things are and how things work.  

So far, so good. Unflattening is a serious and intelligent work of art. It takes the form of comics. It is a generative philosophical inquiry. Let me consider its nature and function as a thesis.

6.4) Unflattening is an EdD thesis. 

Unflattening is an EdD thesis, not a PhD thesis. For the EdD, the thesis may instantiate or demonstrate something without necessarily explaining, demonstrating, or showing it to be true in the sense of a truth claim. Here is a discussion of the 2014 dissertation requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education at Teachers College (2014) Columbia University.

—snip—

The dissertation is a major undertaking by which an Ed.D. candidate demonstrates competence in the major area and ability to prepare an effectively written professional report. Approval of a dissertation proposal is required for certification in some programs; therefore, students should consult their program for additional information. The dissertation may involve the application of a method of scholarly, scientific or professional analysis, research or experimentation; it may be the creation or preparation of materials of educational or other professional significance; or it may entail the design and application of a policy or program in an educational setting.

A dissertation which involves performance in a specific educational situation or the creation or preparation of educational or other professional materials must include a rationale. The rationale shall include an analysis of the theoretical or other bases of the study and shall draw on the literature of professional education or of other relevant fields of scholarship. When a dissertation is a cooperative enterprise, it must be planned so that the individual contribution of each candidate can be identified and evaluated. A candidate should consult with the major advisor on the choice of a type of dissertation most appropriate to his or her professional goals and preparation. The early choice of a topic permits a student to obtain needed preparation in a method of investigation such as historical research or statistical analysis. The subject of the dissertation should be one for which resources are available to the candidate within the University and Teachers College. A doctoral candidate who plans to send or distribute questionnaires or similar instruments in connection with the dissertation must first secure the approval of the questionnaire and its cover letter from the dissertation sponsor or major advisor. All students should review the IRB Website (http://www.tc.edu/irb) for additional assistance.

The dissertation proposal and the dissertation are formal academic work products and as such are expected to follow the conventions of scholarly writing. The dissertation proposal, when submitted to the dissertation proposal committee, and the dissertation, when submitted to the dissertation oral defense committee, must be complete and free of errors in form, style, spelling and grammar. As the author of the documents, the student is responsible for his or her own writing. The documents submitted for the proposal hearing and the dissertation oral defense are expected to be in final form and may not be draft documents. These documents must follow the guidelines in the style manual issued by the Office of Doctoral Studies, General Instructions for the Preparation of Dissertation for the Doctor of Education Degree: A Manual of Style.

—snip—

Unflattening fulfils these criteria to a reasonable degree … There is some ambiguity, yet Sousanis applies "a method of scholarly, scientific or professional analysis” in a broad sense, certainly a generative sense, and there is no question that he engages in serious and bold “experimentation.” He clearly engages in “the creation or preparation of materials of educational or other professional significance.”

The next set of criteria involve an explicit statement or debate: “A dissertation which involves performance in a specific educational situation or the creation or preparation of educational or other professional materials must include a rationale. The rationale shall include an analysis of the theoretical or other bases of the study and shall draw on the literature of professional education or of other relevant fields of scholarship.”

My guess is that there would have been significant discussion about this with respect to Sousanis’s thesis. There is no way for me to know what the thesis committee would have considered. I know that there are occasions when a thesis is so interesting or brilliant in one dimension that a committee will purposely award the degrees despite the explicit failure to fulfill other criteria. This would likely be the case here, but I don’t know. I imagine that this thesis would afford the material for a significant case study, provided that one could engage in a dialogue with Sousanis, his dissertation advisers, and the committee members on the nature of their thinking and deliberations.

Teachers College has always had a tradition of bold inquiry. John Dewey was a professor there for a quarter century from 1904 to 1930. There has also been a long tradition of inquiry in art and through art at Teachers College, and a tradition of engaged scholarship and inquiry through doing. (Full disclosure: my father studied at Teacher’s College in the 1940s, and a cousin did his PhD there.) 

According to the Teachers College web site, “the degree of Doctor of Education emphasizes broad preparation for advanced professional responsibilities through a program based upon extensive study in a specialized branch of the field of education or in an area of instruction.” Sousanis’s dissertation gives ample evidence for this kind of degree. 

Sousanis himself has an intriguing background — he took his bachelor’s degree in mathematics, an abstract and Platonic discipline, and he has also been a professional tennis player and a professional tennis instructor — an embodied discipline of action in the world. Both of these worlds are visible in Unflattening. Those who are interested in what mathematics “is” and “means” should read Reuben Hersh’s (1997) book, What Is Mathematics, Really? Hers describes the interplay between two great mathematical philosophies that form a shadowy but vibrant backdrop to some of the issues visible in Unflattening. 

One of the crucial challenges in awarding a doctorate involves the personal qualities and skills of the candidate. It’s clear to me that Sousanis is a worthy candidate.

Martin asked me about my views on Unflattening as a dissertation. While Martin asked about the PhD thesis, I’m going to give two answers. The first involves the award of the EdD. I would have loved to be present at the oral examination, the defence. (That’s the North American equivalent of a viva.) From this distance and without having been there, I’d have to say I would have voted in favour of the award. 

6.5) Unflattening is not a PhD thesis.

6.5.1) Questions about Unflattening as a potential PhD thesis
6.5.2) General expectations for PhD thesis
6.5.2.1) Qualities that a PhD thesis should normally demonstrate 
6.5.2.2) A PhD thesis should make an original contribution to the knowledge of the field
6.5.2.3) A PhD thesis should explicitly discuss and demonstrate the candidate's research process and research methods

6.5.1) Questions about Unflattening as a potential PhD thesis

If Unflattening had been submitted as a PhD thesis for a research degree, I would not be as convinced. While I might earlier have argued that this is not a PhD thesis, I’m no longer absolutely sure that this would be my view. I’m still not sure, and I’ll explain why this is so.

There is a long and distinguished history of serious philosophers and serious thinkers in other fields who argue that they cannot communicate their work adequately within the framework of the traditional thesis. Søren Kierkegaard’s 1841 magister degree at the University of Copenhagen is one of the great examples. In 1841, the magister was essentially the equivalent of the modern PhD. Copenhagen used the ancient system — the magister was a more extensive degree than the modern licentiate, roughly equal to the current PhD, but far lower than the DrPhilos. The DrPhilos was a far more extensive work, roughly equal to the higher doctorate today. In universities that still award the DrPhilos, it have not been uncommon for full professors to work on the degree for much of a full career, completing the DrPhilos toward the end of an academic life.

In Kierkegaard’s case, the argument revolved around whether Kierkegaard could write the thesis in Danish, rather than Latin. Kierkegaard argued that his thesis on the concept of irony with reference to Socrates required him to make use of puns, jokes, and irony in Danish that were impossible to communicate in Latin. The University of Copenhagen required Kierkegaard to request royal permission from Christian VIII, King of Denmark. Permission was granted — though Kierkegaard was still required to conduct his oral defence (the viva) in Latin. The viva lasted seven hours. I discuss this with references in a paper titled Writing for the PhD in Art and Design. This is available in the section on PhD Training, Skills, and Supervision on my Academia.edu page at URL

https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman

6.5.2) General expectations for PhD thesis
    
There are several questions I have about this thesis in terms of what I’d normally expect in a PhD thesis.

6.5.2.1) Qualities that a PhD thesis should normally demonstrate 

The first question involves the qualities that a PhD thesis should normally demonstrate.  

Gordon Rugg and Marian Petre (2004: 6-7) offer a list of the skills for which we look in someone when we award the PhD degree: 

[Use of academic language] “correct use of technical terms; attention to detail in punctuation, grammar, etc.; attention to use of typographic design … to make the text accessible; ability to structure and convey a clear and coherent argument, including attention to the use of ‘signposting’ devices such as headings to make the structure accessible; writing in a suitable academic ‘voice’; [Knowledge of background literature] seminal texts correctly cited, with evidence that you have read them and evaluated them critically; references accurate reflecting the growth of the literature from the seminal texts to the present day; identification of key recent texts on which your own PhD is based, showing both how these contribute to your thesis and how your thesis is different from them; relevant texts and concepts from other disciplines cited; organization of all of the cited literature into a coherent, critical structure, showing both that you can make sense of the literature – identifying conceptual relationships and themes, recognizing gaps – and that you understand what is important; [Research methods] knowledge of the main research methods used in your discipline, including data collection, record keeping, and data analysis; knowledge of what constitutes ‘evidence’ in your disciplines, and of what is acceptable as a knowledge claim; detailed knowledge – and competent application of – at least one method; critical analysis of one of the standard methods in your discipline showing that you understand both its strengths and its limitations; [Theory] understanding of key theoretical strands and theoretical concepts in your discipline; understanding how theory shapes your research question; ability to contribute something useful to the theoretical debate in your area; [Miscellaneous] ability to do all the above yourself, rather than simply doing what your supervisor tells you; awareness of where your work fits in relation to the discipline, and what it contributes to the discipline; mature overview of the discipline.” 

Unflattening misses many of these criteria. One specific issue that bothered me was the use of ideas and literature from cited authors. Sousanis cited many writers, giving a bibliography, but the citations were general  and loose. Sousanis simply claimed that an author said one thing or another, using those claims to develop his own contribution. While it is fair to attribute ideas to those on whose work one draws, a PhD thesis requires that one demonstrate that these ideas do, indeed, come from the cited author. This requires careful, fine-grained references. Without these, anyone may claim that one distinguished author or another says this or that — whether or not the cited author has actually made the statement is open to question without proper citations.

The craft of research requires greater care.

While would I accept Sousanis’s views in an essay, there is a difference between the context of discovery in which he makes these claims and the context of justification in which one must demonstrate that such claims are accurate. A PhD thesis requires both.

As I see it, there are similar problems with respect to several other key criteria.   

6.5.2.2) A PhD thesis should make an original contribution to the knowledge of the field

The PhD thesis is a research document. It is the “journeyman piece” that marks the transition of a researcher from apprentice status to journeyman status. Where a PhD student conducts research under the guidance of a supervisor, the graduated doctor should now be able to conduct original research. 

In this respect, the step to journeyman status is marked by an original contribution to the knowledge of the field. In a thesis, the apprentice researcher shows that he or she is able to make an original contribution. This means that he or she is now able to undertake research without a supervisor watching over the process. 

Rowena Murray (2002: 52) gives this list of 14 criteria for an original contribution to the knowledge of the field. (Original list in bullet points — KF):

—snip—

1. You say something no one has said before.
2. You do empirical work that has not been done before.
3. You synthesize things that have not been put together before.
4. You make a new interpretation of someone else's material or ideas.
5. You do something in this country that has only been done elsewhere.
6. You take an existing technique and apply it to a new area.
7. You work across disciplines, using different methodologies.
8. You look at topics that people in your discipline have not looked at.
9. You test existing knowledge in an original way.
10. You add to knowledge in a way that has not been done before.
12. You write down a new piece of information for the first time.
13. You give a good exposition of someone else's idea.
14. You continue an original piece of work.

—snip—

Estelle Phillips and Derek Pugh (2000: 63-64) offer a slightly different and similarly useful list of 15 different kinds of original contribution:

—snip—

1. Setting down a major piece of new information in writing for the first time.
2. Continuing a previously original piece of work.
3. Carrying out original work designed by the supervisor.
4. Providing a single original technique observation, or result in an otherwise unoriginal but competent piece of research.
5. Having many original ideas, methods, and interpretations, all performed by others under the direction of the postgraduate.
6. Showing originality on testing somebody else's ideas.
7. Carrying out empirical work that has not been done before.
8. Making a synthesis that has not been made before.
9. Using already known material but with a new interpretation.
10. Trying out something in [one] country that has previously only been done in other countries.
11. Taking a particular technique and applying it to a new area.
12. Bringing new evidence to bear on an old issue.
13. Being cross-disciplinary and using different [methods].
14. Looking at areas that people in the discipline have not looked at before.
15. Adding to knowledge in a way that has not been done before.

—snip—

There is a case to be made that Sousanis makes an original contribution to the knowledge of the field. One may  debate this case, but I nevertheless believe that one can offer arguments for an original contribution as well as offering arguments against it.

Even at the length of a long post to a discussion list, this debate would be far too extensive. I’ll simply argue that I believe the issue is worth considering.

6.5.2.3) A PhD thesis should explicitly discuss and demonstrate the candidate's research process and research methods

A PhD thesis should explicitly discuss and demonstrate the candidate's research process and research methods. Whatever it is that takes place in the world, research is a series of mental activities. Research takes place in the mind. We require words if we are to explain clearly what we have thought about what we have done, our reasoning, our processes, our plans, our steps, and our experiences. Research communications require words. 

Research communications include articles, papers, reports, and PhD dissertations or theses. 

Researchers use words to communicate research ideas. Research is a mental activity. Writing research requires words because words communicate the meta-narrative of research: the meta-narrative of research tells readers what we did, how we did it, what choices we made, why we made them, and what we came to think at the conclusion of the process. Words may be communicated in other media than print. These include presentations, talks, seminars, or multimedia presentations. Whatever the medium, to communicate research ideas, researchers must use words to communicate the meta-narrative of research.

Designers, artists, visual philosophers, engineers, inventors, and makers of different kinds may use two-dimensional and three-dimensional artifacts to communicate instantiations of their ideas. These ideas are often best exemplified or explained by a working model of a specific project, and communicating these ideas is often best managed by using two-dimensional and three-dimensional artifacts. Even then, however, they generally use words. They almost always use words in presenting two-dimensional or three-dimensional models. Words explain their intentions, building a bridge from the idea in the mind of the creator, the idea instantiated in the model, to the client for whom the model represents a potential product or service. In other cases, creators use words to explain to an audience what they did in creating the artefact, product, or service. 

This is also a meta-narrative. It is simply less formal than the meta-narrative of research. This meta-narrative is nearly always located in the pragmatics of a specific project rather than the larger inquiry within which it fits.

Models and objects also play a role in research communication. Depending on what we research, and how we do it, communicating research involves such objects as numbers, images, artifacts, figures, charts, chemical drawings, or words. Research often requires these to exemplify or illustrate aspects of the research problem. Nevertheless, the act of research takes place in the human mind. We use words to communicate research from one human mind to another.

This is not only true of research. We generally use words to communicate what we think from one human mind to another, what we think about anything. For some kinds of thinking, we have explicit and unambiguous symbolic languages to communicate specific kinds of thoughts. This is the case of numbers and discipline specific symbols for functions or operations in mathematics, engineering, or physics. This is the case of numbers and discipline specific symbols for functions or operations in statistics for any field that uses quantitative research. It is also the case for symbols used in logic. Even in these fields, however, we use words.

We use words to explain how and why we came to focus on a problem. We use words to describe earlier attempts by other researchers to work on iterations of the same problem or predecessor problems. We use words to describe the work others have done on our problem.

We use words to share states of mind, both abstract thought and emotional feeling. We use words to communicate how our thinking evolved, and to share the considerations we may have on any topic.

Two-dimensional and three-dimensional artifacts can support communication by making the objects of inquiry clear or by helping to clarify ideas. When we engage in practice-based research, two-dimensional or three-dimensional artifacts may themselves be part of the research process. Physicians, nurses, anaesthesiologists, or others may use images of a surgical procedure to explain or  support narratives of medical research, Engineers may use a computer simulation of a bridge under wind stress or earthquake pressures to support or explain narratives of engineering research.

But images and objects alone cannot communicate the mental acts of research. They cannot describe the metanarrative of research. Two-dimensional and three-dimensional artifacts cannot explicitly represent the complex range of events and issues involved in attempting to solve problems. Neither can they raise or address the wide range of issues involved in any project, including other potential solutions, the reasons for specific choices, and the warnings or caveats that may accompany one solution as contrasted with another.

Many research reports require images and illustrations. All research reports require narrative. This is because we need words to narrate the research metanarrative. The immediate narrative tells us about the project at hand. The metanarrative tells us how the project at hand functions within the larger frame of research in the field.

A PhD dissertation or PhD thesis, much like any research report, article, or paper, requires at least nine distinct elements.

These nine elements are:

1. An explicit statement of the research problem,

2. A discussion of knowledge in the field to date,

3. A discussion of past attempts to examine or solve the problem,

4. A discussion of the methods and approach used to solve the problem in the paper, article, or thesis at hand,

5. A methodological comparison of possible alterative methods,

6. A discussion of problems encountered in the research,

7. A discussion of how the researcher addresses those problems,

8. An explicit statement of how the research paper, article, or thesis at hand contributes to the body of knowledge within the field,

9. A discussion of implications for future research.

Many reports require more distinctions, and some projects require further articulation among these nine elements. This is particularly the case for item 8, the explicit statement of how the research paper, article, or thesis at hand contributes to the body of knowledge within the field. Describing a contribution to the knowledge of a field may involve many steps.

These nine elements also permit us to examine the major areas of metanarrative in which one must distinguish between methods and methodology.

The need to narrate the research on a metanarrative level is why neither three-dimensional artifacts nor two-dimensional visual presentations other than words can serve as full research reports. They may be part of what the research is about. They may constitute part of the research result. The research itself takes place in the human mind, and reporting the research must therefore involve reporting thoughts and experiences.

Researchers in many fields faces this kind of challenge. Chemist and Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffman once wrote an article explaining how people report the research involved in designing chemicals. Hoffman (2002: 30) states “it is impossible to write chemistry without drawing molecules.” Hoffman’s elegant discussion shows how words, equations, and images come together to describe original scientific contributions to his field. Hoffman’s clear, neatly argued lessons can help our field in developing its research traditions, too. Hoffman’s article appears in an anthology of nine articles that are all useful in understanding how people “write their disciplines,” why they must use words, and how they use them (Monroe 2002).

A good research report shows - and tells - enough for the reader to understand the methods and value of the work. It is clear. It is as simple as possible while being as full as it must be. It describes the subject or object of inquiry, the research methods, and the research process so clearly that the reader understands the project and process fully. It demonstrates the qualities of process that help each reader to judge the work properly as research.

This last quality is a particular distinction between writing research reports and reporting about research. A research report is transparent, and it permits us to know more than the fact that something is supposedly so. It allows us to ask for ourselves whether something is so, it allows us to ask how and sometimes why. Most important, a research report permits each reader to analyze the background, the facts, and the issues to reach an individual conclusion based on the evidence and the argument in the article.

This, in part, is why Unflattening is not a research report. It is a generative philosophical statement and an experiential probe. Like Picasso’s Faun Revealing a Sleeping Woman, it allows us to enter and experience a world. All narratives do this in some way, and all narratives are also hermeneutical to some degree — but the wordless narratives of Picasso or Sousanis depend far more on our internal world than on theirs. As Marcel Duchamp used to say, the viewer completes the work of art. Without the viewer, there is no work of art. We could put this in different terms using the ideas of John Dewey’s pragmatism, George Herbert Mead’s philosophical pragmatism and methodological symbolic interactionism, or Herbert Blumer’s symbolic interactionism. The work of art as a physical artefact exists in a world external both to the artist and to the viewer. The meaning of the work of art exists within a human mind. 

Martin wrote about the ratio of words to images in a PhD thesis. If we bring in the notion of explicit symbols that are not words, we can raise this question about mathematics or physics. It is clear that the ratio can differ from project to project, thesis to thesis. For one *part* of the thesis, however, the use of words must be close to 100%. That part is the metanarrative of research, and explicit, shared narrative that allows one human being to tell others what happened in his or her mind during the research project. 

This meta-narrative brings researchers into the mental world of the original researcher by disclosing original mental actions. It is this that allows another researcher to understand the research and to consider it as research, in contrast with simply understanding and evaluating the outcome. For some kinds of research, it is makes a key difference. With a full research report including the meta-narrative, others can repeat or replicate some kinds of research, build on or use others. They can adapt the research and research methods themselves to other ends. They can build the artefact and test it. Without the full narrative, they may be inspired by what they see or learn, but they can only infer or guess about the mental processes in the mind of the researcher. If they want to know how some kinds of artefact function, they must reverse engineer it. This is what researchers at competing firms often do to understand how a product from a rival firm works when they have no access to blueprints or project documentation.

This is also the difference between a research report and a report *ABOUT* research.

Reporting on research is the work of science journalists. Earlier this year, I wrote a post on this difference. I referred to an example of reporting on research about addictive foods. That was a science article reporting about research (Moss 2013). So is a similar article (Bittman 2013). In contrast, the article that Bittman describes is a research report (Basu, Yoffe, Hills, and Lustig 2013), “The Relationship of Sugar to Population-Level Diabetes Prevalence: An Econometric Analysis of Repeated Cross-Sectional Data.” 

The difference between the two kinds of article is simple. A journalist explains. We may find the explanation credible or not, but journalists rarely give us enough information to permit us to draw an appropriate scientific or scholarly conclusion. A researcher explains while presenting enough information about the research to allow us to work our way through to a scientific or scholarly conclusion on our own if we have the appropriate range of skills, knowledge, information, and experience in the field of the article. 

This also involves the principle of replication in science. But the meta-narrative of research is equally vital even in forms of research that do not permit replication. Replication is impossible in some fields, especially fields where context-dependent situations or contingency make each iteration of the problem different in some dimension. A full research narrative with an appropriate meta-narrative allows us to learn enough to understand and apply the research for an appropriate conclusion, even with respect to changes and transformations.

Complex graphic artefacts such as exhibits, posters, or multimedia projects serve as research reports specifically because they can convey the research metanarrative that reports the research process as well as the design outcomes.

An experiential artefact without words that communicate the meta-narrative of research cannot do this. 

Research is a mental activity. It is human, individual, social, and cultural in nature. The mental and cultural process of research is invisible. It cannot be embodied in an artefact unless the artefact is also a medium for narrative communication. The idea of an artefact that conveys or explains research results without using alphabetical or numerical symbols or words is a contradiction in terms. 

People may convey words without writing them. A person can report research without paper, but a person is not an artifact.

Robert R. H. Anholt (2005) wrote an excellent book on the subject of presenting research. While his focus is spoken conference presentations and poster presentations, his discussion of key issues focuses on the elements of a good research report. It has the added advantage of helping a researcher learn to prepare effective presentations for conferences and seminars.

Whatever describes the research process requires two forms of information. One is a description of the thing or process that constitutes the object of inquiry. The other is a description of what we have done, thought, and learned.

To report research, an author must describe the subject or object of inquiry, the research methods, and the research process so clearly that the reader understands the project and process fully. This process narrative is the metanarrative of research. These are the artifacts of evidence in research of any kind. Describing the first artifact of evidence involves articulate narrative description as well as any necessary models, figures, diagrams, illustrations, drawings, or images. The model may be the thing itself – a toaster or a teapot, a cup or a car, a cartoon or a comic book.

Words also play a role. Only narration transmits the metanarrative of research to place research in context. This permits us to inquire into the process and research activity as well as into the subjects or objects of investigation. Since the research process takes place in the mind of the researcher, reporting research requires the narration of a mental process in addition to a report of what we learn.

There are arguments to be made for new kinds of research communication. Earlier, I mentioned Robert Horn (1998). 

Horn’s web site is:
 
http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/

Horn attempts to describe new ways of communicating through what he calls visual language. Horn’s theories of visual language are important for many kinds of communication. One of Horn’s articles describes new ways of communicating that he believes will and should supplant the older style of normative, grammatical narrative. He labels this new kind of writing “visual language.”

Horn (2001: 1) discusses the challenges involved in visual language. “(A) what to put in and what to leave out (there are some kinds of writing where you leave out the most important information!); (B) how thoughts stick together (and how to organize this stickiness); (C) what writing should be linear and what should not; (D) when to tightly integrate words and images into visual language; and (E) what in the future may be called metawriting.” Then he goes on to discuss the new rules and the old, considering when and how to apply each.

One of Horn’s most interesting points is that visual language requires the tightly coupled, appropriate use of both words and images. Neither words nor images alone constitute visual language. The frequent wish seen in design presentations to find a way of communicating research without words or alphanumeric symbols is impossible. Only the tight and appropriate integrated use of words and images will do for many kinds of research report. For some discussions, narrative alone will do, particularly for describing internal processes, thought processes, and the metanarrative of research.

To sum things up, the need to narrate research on a metanarrative level is why neither artifacts nor visual presentations alone can serve as full research reports. They are part of what the research is about and they may constitute part of the research result, but the research itself takes place in the human mind, andreporting the research must therefore involve reporting thoughts and experiences.

Artists, cartoonists, or even some philosophers who want to communicate the content of experience may not need to use words. Artists, cartoonists, and philosophers who want to communicate research must use words, written or spoken. Designers who want to communicate design may not need to use words. Designers who want to communicate design research must learn to write or speak the metanarrative of research. 

Researchers in many fields struggle with writing – so does nearly anyone who writes well. I suppose there are mathematicians who prefer to use numbers only and chemists who wish only towork with chemicals in a lab. Those who have productive research careers learn to use words. Designers must do so as well.

6.6) Conclusions

My conclusion is that Unflattening is an excellent work or art, and an interesting philosophical inquiry. I am aware that some philosophers would disagree, but these are my views as someone who thinks about philosophy without being a professional philosopher. There is no question that Unflattening warrants the award of the EdD that Columbia University Teachers College bestowed on Nick Sousanis.

All these conclusions create questions that one can debate or consider. These are my views, and I’ve tried to outline why I came to them without writing a full article. 

I cannot reach a final conclusion on whether Unflattening would in my view merit a PhD award. There are too many arguments to be made on each side of an answer. 

For the reasons I state here, however, I would say that there are more arguments against a PhD award than for it. But Unflattening and Martin’s questions open a window of possibilities. These possibilities deserve serious consideration.

With another three months to think about this, I suppose it would be possible to think more deeply on these issues and to say more. I might also like to give some thought to ideas and issues within the thesis itself — for example, Unflattening is itself a flat representation; Sousanis makes some scientific claims in the areas of perception and physiology that may be open to challenge; several of Sousanis’s philosophical claims should generate a rich range of debate than he gives to them, and this might well be a debate of the intensely visual, generative kind that this book exemplifies.

This is a wonderful book. No doubt about this in my mind. The fact that it can reward deep consideration with an ever-deepening debate testifies to its power as a generative philosophical inquiry. Ultimately, I believe that research requires both generative inquiry and justification, and I believe that research requires the metanarrative that allows us to understand what it is that the research thinks and does in a human mind that is only accessible through language, that most human of tools.    

This post has taken three months of reading, writing, and polishing. This is all the time I can give it, at least for now. These are my views.

And here I stop.

Yours,
 
Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/

Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia

--

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