[-empyre-] January at empyre - Research in Practice

[Sue Hawksley]

Hello, its great to be invited into this discussion:

I recently completed a practice-led PhD at University of Edinburgh,  
Edinburgh College of Art, supported by a full-time studentship. As a  
mature student, the engagement with academia through the PhD was a  
hugely rewarding opportunity. It permitted me to consolidate and  
deepen knowledge of broad-ranging yet connected areas of practice,  
engaged over the course of a professional career in dance and fuelled  
by an interest in interdisciplinary and collaborative practices  
including working with new media.

The interest in the PHD was bringing ideas from different areas of  
practice together, spreading them out and stretching the connections  
between them. This created certain challenges, as the PhD format tends  
to prefer a narrowing of focus, a drilling -down. I was fortunate to  
be supported in my approach by the context of the studentship - a  
significant feature was that the research and supervision were cross- 
disciplinary, bridging dance & choreography, philosophy and  
informatics.  A core concern was to engage 'tacit' knowledge and to  
'follow the materials', lending it an improvisatory nature, and  
largely determining the pace. One of the most valuable aspects for me  
was the bracketing of an extended period of focused time and space to  
attend to this concern.

I have just begun a new post as SL in Dance and MA course co- 
ordinator, so the question of "whether academic environments support  
and foster their practice or demand adaptions to their working methods  
that can compromise their preferred models of practice" is currently  
being tested. My initial experience is of a world where teaching and  
administration duties keep me super-busy and occupy most of the empty  
space. The daily routine is generally accented by a particular pace  
and rhythm - that of speed and urgency. To keep up and cope with this,  
some of the skills learned through producing the thesis, meeting  
deadlines etc., are proving invaluable. My worry is that the knowledge  
gained through engaging the materials according to their own rhythm  
and dynamic  will become elusive. The biggest challenge I forsee is  
safeguarding space and time to move and think. I am working  
(frantically!!) to buy time for future research, my concern is that by  
the time this time arrives, the practice could be locked into a tempo  
which will then become a defining feature of future practice-led  
research.

In response to Donna's post, from what I have written right now it  
seems like I'm positioning myself as Dr_I was_an_artist_then_I  
was_a_researcher_now_Iam_an_academic.
But I have hope that this can shift towards  
Dr_Iam_an_artistresearcheracademic.

Best wishes,
Sue

Sue Hawksley
sue at articulateanimal.org.uk
http://www.articulateanimal.org.uk




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