< Back to Events and Reports N.B. The papers presented at this conference will be summarised on a web site by the organisers. That site is not live yet but keep a look out via the Exchange 98 web site. Some papers from the conference are in the Yellow Binder Research Collection in Ashburne Library. Subtitled 'Facilitating Art and Design Research' this was the second such day conference, and was very effectively organised, with most presentations tightly kept to 20 minutes, followed by at least 15 minutes of questions. It was attended by around 45 external national delegates and speakers, including gallery curators and University staff, but only around 5 percent were research students. There seems to be lack of opportunities nationally for student networking, but Joanne Kane of Napier University led a student discussion group. Overall, the acceptance of practice as a research method seems reasonably established now, with strong papers in support of this by Sally Morgan etc. Researchers are beginning to differentiate more strongly between different methods (design, fine, historical, cultural) although cross-fertilisation still occurrs. There were some interesting arguments for new kind of 'professional award', such as Tim Moscovitch's idea for a Doctor of Design, and Tevfik Balcioglu's differentiation between the career aims of traditional and practice-based Ph.D.s. There was some informal feedback from the Doctoral Education in Design Conference, Ohio. In the USA they don't have Fine Art practice Ph.D.s, the MFA being the 'terminal degree'. They do seem to have much more respect for the M.Phil though, which rather under-rated here. It also tends to take about 10 years to set up a new degree for administration reasons, possibly one of the reasons for the non-existence of practice Ph.D.s. Beryl Graham, March 1999.
|
