Positioning the Arts in the Research Process: Perspectives from Higher Education

Abstract

Research in the visual arts has contributed to the creation of environments that involve cross-disciplinary, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary projects in departments within and across universities. An overview is provided of the historical context of doctoral awards in the arts with a definition of the terms practice-based, practice-led, and practice as research discussed. It articulates the challenges when acquiring explicit and exact knowledge alongside more subjective approaches that utilize tacit knowledge from artistic practice in research projects. Drawing on examples from art practice and doctoral students work, it analyzes objective, subjective, empirical, and hermeneutic paradigms, as described by Pierre Bourdieu, which can combine empirical approaches and individual understandings to re-enforce our understandings of the world.