[iDC] Praxis-based Ph.D.s

[Margaret Morse]

Dear IDCs, I have been following the exchanges between Chris and 
Simon with admiration--to rich to summarize here.  Thank you! Thank 
you!   I've am afraid my comment on Danny's post led to smiley 
faces--I found his explanation of the social consequences of 
practice-based research satisfying.  Thank you!  Robert, whom I think 
of as a free spirit,  poses the question, why not a degree in 
creativity and, for example, business management?  Chris had earlier 
expressed the desire for a Ph.D. in different field than art--which 
does nonetheless serve the art practice and teaching of several 
artists whom she named.  Erin explained the MFA/Ph.D. program 
situation in Canada and espoused an approach concerned with how art 
produces thought.  I don't know what kind of texts to imagine in her 
series with Massumi named Technologies of  Lived Abstraction, so I'll 
check it out.   Lynette described a practice-based professional Ph.D. 
program in Performance  and Practice. " The 'professional' PhD is for 
people usually in their 50s-70s who want to take the opportunity to 
reflect on their work, and document the creative insights and 
contributions to knowledge that it has made."  Clearly, we are 
dealing with many models that serve different constituencies in 
widely varying institutional cultures.

We still haven't heard from someone experienced in the University of 
Plymouth or similarly organized programs.  Jill Scott gave me some 
interesting material about collaborations her students were making 
with scientific labs in Zurich.  Maybe I can entice her to join us.

This makes me want to collect posts into a little handbook divided 
into categories for my own and colleagues reference.