Hi Rob

I would definitely agree that the emphasis is placed on linking BA & MA and
that, in my experience, the possibility of PhD as a further option seems
never to be mentioned. Not even with the growth in practice-led studies.
Though I may be out of date here as I guess I have been a bit out of the
teaching side of things for a few years whilst sitting on the student side
of the fence full time.

I had an interdisciplinary supervisory team, including a professor of Human
Geography. Sometimes I think it would have been good to situate myself
differently - to have registered with Queen Mary, for example, and have the
'guest' supervisors from my 'home territory'. That way, I too would have
received the kind of training you are talking about. I suspect it is less of
a pre/post 92 issue and more of the art school/academia, immature/mature
research culture issue. The university I was based at is a mono-cultural
institution in the sense that it is purely art & design. I suspect other
post 92 institutions that are broader in scope offer those art & design
students doing PhDs a similar training programme to yours. Though again, I
may very well be wrong. Interestingly my human geography professor was
really on board with the 'visual', but I guess there is a tradition of the
visual within the geography, and she has also worked in collaboration with
artists regularly.

With regard to graphic design specifically, I am not sure that I was any
better off in terms of the knowledge of anyone running the training
programme, as it it was pretty much exclusively fine art oriented -
definitely no interest in the letterhead, never mind anything else design
related. I felt very much like a second class citizen as a graphic designer,
but that is probably a whole other thread...

Cheers,
Alison

On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> 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.
>



-- 
* * *

Dr. Alison Barnes

School of Graphic Design, LCC
University of the Arts, London

www.alisonbarnesonlineportfolio.tumblr.com
http://informationenvironments.academia.edu/AlisonBarnes/About
http://geo-graphic.blogspot.com/