Hi all,
Richard asked about directions of inquiry of doctoral students in
design.
Then Ken asked “what research topics are you pursuing? What kinds of
methods are you using?”
I didn’t answer Richard’s original post because
1. it’s summer holidays here and I was feeling lazy :-)
2. My research isn’t based IN the discipline of design, but in
sociology.
But my topic does link with threads on the list, including the recent
one initiated by Gunnar’s question about talent.
Broadly, I’m investigating the rise in popularity of the ‘creative’
degree and how design disciplines intersect with current educational
policies and practices in New Zealand. The methods I’m using are
discourse analysis and interviews.
I think the expansion of design education can be indexed not simply to
stages of industrial development, but also to how national education
systems are understood to operate in the context of globalization. In
NZ, this context has been shaped by discourses of ‘lifelong-learning’
and the ‘knowledge economy’. These discourses are being put into
practice through neo-liberal governmental techniques (e.g. the
marketization of education, growth and innovation frameworks, ‘creative
industry’ development). The manner in which these techniques have
overlaid liberal/humanist discourses of design has opened up new spaces
for creative subjectivity. This seems to me to have a lot to do with
why we now have all these ‘creative’ bodies turning up to get their
degree in design.
Told you it was a sociological inquiry!
I’m interested in how design makes people, as well as how people make
design. So my research doesn’t involve designing anything - except a
thesis that will meet academic criteria in sociology...I hope...
Yours, on a cold summer day in NZ
Amanda Bill
PhD student
Department of Women's Studies
Department of Sociology
University of Auckland
phone +64 4 3877057
mobile 027 491 4134
On Sunday, January 9, 2005, at 03:52 AM, Ken Friedman wrote:
> Thank you, Joy and Mattias, for sharing your work with us.
>
> With over 1,200 subscribers, PhD-Design is one of the largest
> communities of doctoral students and doctoral supervisors working in
> design research. My estimate is that some 20 to 25% of the list
> members are graduate students.
>
> I'd like to repeat Dick Buchanan's invitation to doctoral students to
> share their current research with us.
>
> I have two particular questions --
>
> 1) What research topics are you pursuing ?
>
> 2) What kinds of methods are you using ?
>
> Research fellows on the list have interesting projects under way.
> It's easy to name a dozen -- John Feland, Chris Heape, Michael Hohl,
> Hans Samuelson, Noam Austerlitz, Bilge Mutlu, Jurie Groenewald,
> Jesper Clement, Dagny Stuedahl, Amanda Bill, Bruce Tharp.
>
> If we add recently completed doctors such as Kristina Niederrer,
> Susan Hagan, Tiiu Poldma, Norm Sheehan, Fatina Saikaly, Kristina
> Niedderer, or John Restrepo, I suspect that this would give us a rich
> and reasonably robust survey of the field.
>
> Dick's suggestion interested many of us. I gather the suggestion led
> to many conversations over lunch and tea at our many schools. Given
> the difficulty of tracking doctoral work in the many universities and
> design schools we represent, I know that the responses have been very
> welcome.
>
> May I request that doctoral research fellows and recent doctors tell
> us about their work?
>
> It would be especially nice to have online access to completed
> dissertations from those who have dissertations available online.
>
> Ken Friedman
>
>
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