Friday Salon: Practice based-PhDs

The instigation of the practice-based PhD marks a transformation in practice from explorative and experimental to theoretical and research-led. This Salon assesses the nature of the research programmes to question their role and legacy within artistic practice today. 

What are artists to gain from undertaking a PhD? Are they becoming overqualified and inappropriately pressured to be absorbed into the wider University culture, or is it important for artists to take this trend as an opportunity to claim the research territory for their own form of working? Does the practice-based PhD give graduating MA artists a more open pathway than that which might be offered outside of the institute, or does it narrow the possibilities for art?

Chaired by Marquard Smith (School Research Leader and Head of Doctoral Studies, Royal College of Art), speakers include Rachel Garfield (Director of Postgraduate Studies, University of Reading) Lana Locke (Artist and currently enrolled on a practice-based doctorate at Chelsea College of Art) and Sharon Morris (Head of Doctoral Programme at Slade School of Fine Art).