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Hi Alison I want to briefly return to the specific point you make here (below) because I think provides some a critical reflective insight to the current climate that a mature PhD candidate with our respective backgrounds may be faced with in electing to do a PhD. Your experience contrasts with my own at a research led Russell Group university in the UK that probably would not recognise graphic design beyond the emblem on its letterhead. From the very beginning, I was encouraged to undertake research training courses provided by the Graduate School, and the choice was wide-ranging. A quick glance back at what I elected to do in the early phase is listed below, the only compulsory course being the 'Tradition of critique'. The point I want to make here is that often these courses were populated by Masters as well as PhD students studying topics as broad as 'nursing studies' to 'violence in same sex relationships'. It was bewildering to me, despite my experience in industry. But. I began to understand how established research subjects nurtured their future PhD students. Would you agree that in 'art school' based design education the emphasis has seemed to be on linking BA and Masters, rather than Masters and Doctoral level studies. Its often quoted that traditionally the terminal degree for art and design is MA, and this is consistent of those tutors who taught you and me. I wonder if this is a critical point of recent historical differentiation between pre/post 92 Universities in the UK, between art school/academia, between independent/co-dependent disciplines, between immature/mature research cultures. Of course, in the approach I experienced there was little empathy with the tradition of inquiry in arts based 'design practice', so there is an balance to be struck. But, does here lie one of the important challenges for the future of research in arts based education. Rob Dr Robert Harland | Lecturer | School of the Arts | School of the Arts, English and Drama | Loughborough University http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.htm<http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.html> —Websites —Referencing and citing using Endnote and Reference Manager —Analysing interview transcripts —Interview workshop —Tradition of critique (11 x 2hr sessions) —Getting started with research design and statistics: 3 —Getting started with research design and statistics: 2 —Getting started with research design and statistics: 1 —Planning research and time management —Exploiting the power of MS Word a+b long documents from scratch —Questionnaires —Case studies —Traditions in qualitative research —Nature of the PhD and the supervision process —Observational & ethnographic research in social sciences —Focus groups —Introduction to qualitative research —Philosophy of science, scientific ethics & research design On 6 Oct 2011, at 14:33, ALISON BARNES wrote: In reality I found a huge gap in my knowledge, in particular in relation to the traditions and academic discourse of research. I took part in the training programme offered by my University, which focussed primarily on practical research (more information gathering and management) skills for first years, then academic writing and viva/presentation skills for years two to five. Alongside these there were a range of very interesting and sometimes useful seminars from guest lecturers that focused on their own research. But I can't help feeling if the training programme had begun with an introduction to research design and an introduction to a range of qualitative approaches, I may have not only been able to position the work of the lecturers more clearly within the wider academy, but also my own.