Dear Clive,
Welcome.
As someone who knows the origins of this list, it is important to listen
to your insights.
As you know:
The Ohio conference was the foundation experience that allowed this PhD
Design group to emerge.
Sufficient senior researchers were concerned enough about the development
of junior researchers that this group was established.
That concern about the development of research through researchers has
been the entire point of engaging with this list.
It has often been pointed out, over the years, and again recently (on and
off-list), that very little time is directly spent on this key business.
Some students post request for information to help them with their
literature review.
Some use the list to organise resources - collect published PhDs and MAs -
point to archives etc.
Some argue through key points in their developing work (this doesn¹t
happen very often).
Some put up lists of upcoming conferences and CFPs.
Some advocate for radical alternative approaches.
Senior researchers generously respond to these postings as best they are
able.
Some senior researchers give access to significant research methods
materials.
Some senior researchers engage with off-list mentoring which can help PhD
candidates get passed the blind spots of their supervisors.
Some senior researchers also engage in extensive back and forth arguments
with each other.
How to best approach these on-line disputations and contestations?
Many aspects of the disputations and contestations fall into rhetorical
modes that some junior researchers are not familiar with.
Some junior researchers take offence at certain rhetorical modes and see
these modes as indicative of power and age and gender and colour.
When I listen to the list, I listen to all the voices on the list.
As a co-owner it is not my privilege to hear some and not others.
So, I listen to your despair. You write:
"Frankly, in its most conventional modes, 'design research' is of little
interest, either to thought or practice, and far less so than some here
seem to imagine.²
I must insist that a conventional sense of purpose and interest is a basic
requirement of a list-owner.
Should we contest these ideas in public as an exemplar for junior
researchers?
Would it be indicative of blind power for a co-owner to ask you to
elaborate for the sake of this community?
If a senior researcher, such as yourself, is seriously in despair that
design research, in its conventional modes, is of ³little interest, either
to thought or practice² why is there a PhD Design list at all, we might
ask and discuss?
The list, as I understand it, supports conventions while encouraging
alternative ways of going.
This is a pretty standard understanding of institutions that receive
government support.
I am paid by the Australian government to spend my days doing this stuff.
Is this list too conventional?
Are alternative approaches marginalised on this list?
It should surprise no-one that dominant modes will dominate conventional
organisations and cultural groups.
Intersectionality was pointed to recently on the list.
This approach arose historically, as I understand it, out of white
feminists denying other women.
That is, it was a non-conventional approach to a group of non-conventional
academics.
Now it is a conventional way of looking at gender.
So, if this list is conventional in offering junior researchers exposure
to a range of conventional understandings of knowledge -
I would see this is a requirement, not as a deficit.
Looking forward to your reply
keith
On 2/2/17, 1:36 am, "PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD
studies and related research in Design on behalf of Clive Dilnot"
<[log in to unmask] on behalf of [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Some who have defensively posted here appear to have the
>implicit notion that they are the keepers of the sacred flame of
>³research.² This is nonsense, both personally and intellectually. The
>truth
>is that while ³design research² has globally made great institutional
>strides since the 1980s (as represented by the number of PhDs and the
>like)
>intellectually and especially in terms of the models majorly represented
>on this list - it has made almost no real advance. Frankly, in its most
>conventional modes, "design research" is of little interest, either to
>thought or practice, and far less so than some here seem to imagine.
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