Dear all,

I have been reading this discussion with interest. Not much detail has been given, and a few comments have been off-handed. The impression I have is that people seem to think that the state of affairs is just the way it is and there is not much to be done. I would like to thicken the discussion a bit with my personal experience. The post is long. I hope it is of some interest, and adds in productive ways to understandings of design research in our educational institutions today.

First, my position at SDU in Denmark:

My current position is 50% teaching 50% research, with admin folded in accordingly. The admin usually takes up more time than I would like, but I also manage to keep it somewhat reasonable by working from early in the morning to late at night most days, and on weekends catching up with things that I have missed. I don’t normally get holidays (and risk getting in trouble for this if anyone from management in my university is reading this post). The reason being, we are required to take holidays all at the same time in Denmark, and this timing doesn’t suit me – it’s a time when families go on holidays with children, when costs are high, when holiday locations are full, and when the university is quiet and I can work uninterrupted… so I work when the time is ideal, even though it is the only time I am authorised to take a break. If I didn’t do that I wouldn’t get the work done I would like to get done and I would feel unduly pressured. I do officially take a break at different times, and I do escape for three weeks in the Summer time, but I usually work while travelling (for a few hours each morning) because I am an early riser and I find it’s the best way to get things done. Needless to say, much of my work is not compensated, though I am privileged to have a full time wage.

Second, my experience with supervision: 

I am regularly asked to supervise PhDs at other institutions and am not paid for this. I am currently external supervisor in universities in Australia, Chile, Germany, Belgium and Austria, and I have one completion from a university in Finland. In each case, when I ask about compensation, I am told that it is not an option. People seem to think it’s normal. I will never stop asking because I never believe this should be normal. In fact, I find this state of affairs extremely problematic, but being in Denmark, where one cannot get a promotion without 2 completions, and cannot get supervisory experience without external funding, which is difficult to get without supervisory experience, it creates a conundrum. To deal with the situation, I use my research time to supervise candidates elsewhere. Soon I will have my second completion, so will finally be eligible for a promotion and can cut back on the external, pro bono supervision, focus on bringing students to my home university, and have my work appropriately compensated (imagining for a moment that I keep my workload appropriate to what I am paid for, which will probably never be the case). 

Significantly, at SDU, my supervision efforts come out of my teaching load. I know this is not the case in all universities. At RMIT in Australia, for example, where I am an adjunct, supervision comes out of the research load, without regard for whether the candidate’s topic is related in any way to the supervisors’ research focus. This may be more or less problematic in the different subject areas. For Art & Design it can be extremely problematic. At RMIT, I am joint-first supervisor (50%) of a candidate, and despite the fact that RMIT will be handsomely compensated by the government when the candidate completes, I am not compensated for my efforts. It certainly raises some issues, especially if you consider I was asked to take this on because they did not have the expertise to support the candidate. The same thing happened with the university in Finland, though I am unaware if they receive government compensation for completions...

Thirdly, examinations:

For examinations, I am normally compensated, though there are exceptions. RCA compensates ~GBP400 for an examination and around the same for a pre-examination where funding allows (I have done both). I am privileged enough not to keep track of the others, though I have been paid for examinations by universities in both Sweden and Denmark. I have also done examinations in Sweden and not been paid. 

Pre covid, examinations included nice dinners and opportunities for exchange with colleagues, which was always great. With covid, and perhaps moving forward as we adjust our traveling habits to better align with global pressures, we do the work – we examine the candidate and if we are lucky there is an honorarium, otherwise it’s simply something that we do on evenings and weekends, because frankly, who has time to do such things during a workday? I envy people who are able to arrange their time to incorporate such tasks into a normal working week. Obviously, I don’t envy them enough to do it myself – my research is too important to me to put it aside, and I want to contribute to the next generation of scholars so I squeeze it in wherever I am able. 

Some thoughts on funding supervision:

When I put in funding bids (which I am now bringing home, so able to co-finance PhDs at my home institution), I include a month per year for supervision, and an additional month co-financed per year per supervisor, to ensure the candidates' work is well integrated into the project as a whole. You could half this if you had to, but I believe this is what’s needed for practice-based research, so this is what I do. Having had success now at the EU level, and soon having my second PhD completion under my belt, I can now turn to the Danish funding bodies and hope for some success. The formula I will use for financing supervision will be the same - a month a year, financed by the funding body and a month a year co-financed by SDU, to ensure adequate direct supervision and integration of the work into the research project as a whole. I have colleagues who use this same formula with Danish funding bodies and internationally, it seems standard where practice is a large part of the work.

Some final thoughts:

I am extremely privileged to have a secure, full time position. I fought for it – dealing with precarity for a number of years due to restructures and whatnot. And I am only secure at the moment because I brought in a very large grant. Such precarity is increasingly common, as are the pressures I describe above. They create undue stress on people and can prevent many from performing well enough to forge a stellar career. I agree that there can be a lack of understanding of design as a research discipline, but even in institutions where design research is taken seriously, the amount of support for people to flourish – to develop good practices in supervision, and to be well supervised – can be limited. Having supervised and examined in a wide range of Art and Design institutions and University faculties including art, design, maths and computing, I am relieved to be situated in a university, where I can lean on other disciplinary histories to claim what I believe my students require.

Best, Danielle
—
Danielle Wilde, PhD, MA(RCA)
Associate Professor, University of Southern Denmark
Director, SDU SOFT LAB || Research Lead, Embodied Design | Food & Regenerative Futures 
Local Coordinator | WP co-lead, FOOD2030 in Kolding (2021-2024) 
[FUSILLI (H2020 101000717) Fostering Urban food System Transformation through Innovative Living Labs Implementation]

Visiting Professor, Estonia Academy of Art Doctoral School (2020-2021)
Adjunct Professor, RMIT University School of Fashion and Textiles (since 2018).

http://daniellewilde.com
__





-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list  <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------