Corkscrew: Practice Research Beyond the PhD – Details, episodes & analysis

On Tuesday 28th June 2022, The School of Arts at Birkbeck, University of London, held its inaugural Postgraduate Research (PGR) Showcase at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on The Mall in London. Heralded as an opportunity to discover where creative curiosity meets critical thinking, Birkbeck doctoral researchers and alumni shared and presented their creative practice research. Talks and exhibits on view to the public included poetry, photography, film curation, audio-visual essays, and radio.

The presenters at the event, all featured in the audio, are listed below alongside a link to some of their work. The lead organiser of the evening was Janet McCabe, https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/profile/8006997/janet-mccabe

Russell Banfield presented his film, The Woman in the Yellow Dress. https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/fc/article/id/2709/

Caroline Molloy presented Backgrounds as Foregrounds, representing one aspect of her research process that used creative practice as a way of gathering knowledge and understanding the relationship between the photographic studio and the portrait of the sitter. https://www.uca.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/caroline-molloy/

Fran Lock read a selection of new poems. https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/itemlist/user/679-franlock

Sarah Scarsbrook screened a film, The Coding Cave and the Performative Fishbowl, alongside drawings, ReCollected: Self-Reflective Analytic Drawings, with Data Reams on Stand: Data-Date: Conversations in Reams. https://www.uca.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/sarah-scarsbrook/

Selina Robertson screened a tape/slide film, Feminist Re-Imaginings at the Rio, 1980-2020. https://www.clubdesfemmes.com/about-us/

Golnoosh Nour read a selection of new poetry. https://vervepoetrypress.com/2021/10/03/golnoosh-nour/?v=79cba1185463

Josephine Coleman presented a talk called Practice/Research: Interviewing with purpose and invited guests to participate in her Sony Sociable Recording Experiment. https://www.brunel.ac.uk/people/josephine-coleman

This final episode of the current season is a short montage compiled from the first four conversations between Sophie and guests, sharing their experiences and expertise in all things relating to how we (can) academicize arts and humanities practice as research. 

Dip your ears into the philosophical and practical musings of these scholars, researchers, and educators who use their artistic and creative practice in and as research: Anne Douglas, Emile Devereaux, Lucy Wright, and Rachel Hann. Their original discussions with Sophie are still available in our back catalogue and you can listen in full at your leisure.

A useful link:

https://praguk.wordpress.com/

Harold completed his PhD by practice exploring the activation of Black Album covers through durational performance at Leeds Beckett in 2020. He started it in 2016 on a part-time basis and appreciated the opportunity to carve out ring-fenced research time whilst teaching on the BA in fine art. Harold likens the process of finding the original contribution to knowledge to climbing Everest. His thesis was grounded on case studies of other artists; he identified a synergy between critical reflection on one's own and others' works which feeds into one's practice. For him, the reflection would be suspended when focussing on his active moments of practice, and return when writing up his findings. So much comes out of a PhD, so many lines of inquiry; Harold could have written five or six more PhDs. Equipped now with transferable skills, he has more confidence, is a better teacher, and has discovered that he loves writing about other artists. On the point of leaving Leeds Beckett, Harold is slowly coming to terms with the PhD being over but considers it the beginning of what happens next. 

Links:

https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/staff/dr-harold-offeh/

https://www.haroldoffeh.com/info

Four more speakers from our training event:

Dr Agata Lulkowska

https://www.staffs.ac.uk/people/agata-lulkowska

Agata is Senior Lecturer in Film Production at Staffordshire University where she specialises in practice-based PhD supervision in filmmaking. With a background in film practice, photography and installations, her PhD “The Arhuacos, film, and the politics of representing the ‘Other’ in Colombia” was undertaken at Birkbeck. It was unfunded and took her eight years part-time. She had to keep working but also attended and organised conferences and festivals and published. Agata’s tips: do something you enjoy, be patient for the right opportunities, and network! She is also co-founder and director of international interdisciplinary Conference and Art/Film Festival, Communities and Communication https://www.agatalulkowska.com/communitiesandcommunication

Dr Nina Perry

https://www.ninaperry.co.uk/

Nina is an artist and researcher whose interests lie in sound, storytelling, voice and music. She has taught at several universities, most recently as senior lecturer in audio production at Bournemouth University, where she remains as visiting fellow, which means she submits her work to the REF. She misses academia for the opportunities to explore but is really enjoying freelancing. Nina did her PhD by publication, reflecting on a body of audio productions and projects she had already created. Titled "Music, Narrative, Voice and Presence: Revealing a composed feature methodology", her mission was to find the original contribution to knowledge through her practice. She feels the PhD improved her writing, helped unleash her creativity and she developed her ability to critically reflect on her own creative practice. Nina now runs workshops for professionals and community groups, and enjoys guest speaking when invited.

Dr Emile Devereaux

https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p335881-emile-devereaux

(See also Episode 4 in this series)

Emile is Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at University of Sussex. With two US degrees already - anthropology and art practice - these combined into an MFA and later a PhD in Europe. Emile's research expertise lies across visual culture and media arts, combining film, video, 2D/3D animation, performance and interactive/digital media. Outputs combine these media forms in socially engaged practices through site-specific installations, media art interventions and tactical media. Other works draw upon the histories and spaces of media technologies. Emile is fascinated by the impact of technological developments, economies, and systems of distribution on bodies and environments. Doing practice opens doors and widens horizons and the PhD provided Emile with more flexibility on an international scale, especially as a trans non-binary scholar. Through collaborative working and media interventions you don't have to rely on just the book/printed word to connect with audiences.

Dr Golnoosh Nourpanah

https://www.gnour.com/

Golnoosh is a writer, poet and educator from Tehran. Her creative work focuses on queer desire and sexualities. She did her PhD at Birkbeck in creative writing exploring the work of (and as) queer writers in post-revolutionary Iran. She found the critical component - 30,000 words - complicated yet enlightening: challenging for the rules she needed to abide by and the academic language which she found dry. She didn't enjoy that aspect but was delighted when the external examiner commended her on how well the PhD was constructed. Golnoosh is glad that it's over but doing the PhD has been liberating. She has come to accept that we have to survive in a hierarchical capitalist society, so the PhD helps. She has been published widely since and is now engaged in teaching at universities and a range of other contracts and performances in the UK.

This week's episode is the first of two featuring audio recorded from the CHASE-funded Corkscrew Workshop held in June for practice-based PhD students. The host, Dr Sophie Hope, kicks off by welcoming the participants and provides a short outline of her own doctoral journey. There follow four more short presentations

https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/profile/8004718/sophie-hope

https://sophiehope.org.uk/

Reflecting on her career, Sophie admits how privilege has informed her decisions without realizing quite how much at the time.

Dr Josephine Coleman

https://www.brunel.ac.uk/people/josephine-coleman

Jo outlines her doctoral research on community radio and explains that the reason for doing the PhD was primarily because she wanted to teach at a University level. She describes how the process has inspired her teaching practice, bringing reflexivity to her work.

Dr Rachel Hann

https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/h/rachel-hann/

(See also episode 2 in this series)

Rachel discusses the issue of how universities can frame (or struggle to frame) what we are doing through practice research, because the tendency is to be concerned with how much money (and how many students) we are bringing in. And she raises the challenge we face when asked to account for the impacts of our research; since outputs relating to practice are harder to pin down. Rachel is now accustomed to showing/arguing process. She always puts a Research Question at the start of a project to drive her intellectual investigation. Her practice gives the signposts for how she approaches answering that question. She is currently exploring how we stage trans and non-binary feeling and what that means in a critical context at the moment.

Writer Dr Olumide Popoola

https://www.olumidepopoola.com/

Olumide shares her experience of doing a PhD in Creative Writing at University of East London. She had already been teaching, but finds she has done less at Universities since completing. Doing the doctorate, she found that she spent much more time defending her process rather than on the creative writing itself. Having said that, she learned and developed so much, having since published her creative work as a novel, When We Speak Of Nothing. She has found that having a doctorate definitely opens doors when applying for funding. She is the initiator and leader of the Arts Council-funded mentoring scheme for emerging LGBTQ+ writers, The Future is Back.

Contemporary folk artist Dr Lucy Wright

https://www.artistic-researcher.co.uk/

(See also episode 3 in this series)

Lucy talks about her approach to artistic practice and folk art generally as reclaiming, making do, and thinking for ourselves. She sees the importance of encouraging people to do things on their own terms. Her PhD helped expand her thinking and granted her a creative freedom that ended as soon as she completed. Needing to find full-time work, she went on to work in a series of short-term academic posts, supporting other people’s research in a range of different disciplines. She is now engaged in social art projects, which involve showcasing other people’s work as well as doing her own art and commissions. The important thing, Lucy says, is to find ways to make our practice sustainable.

In this episode, Sophie talks to Lucy Lyons whose passion for drawing and the process she calls ‘slow looking’ converges with a fascination for anatomy and pathology. Her PhD, entitled Delineating Disease, was completed at Sheffield Hallam in 2009 involved investigating medicine through the methodology of artistic practice. She has continued to pursue this path and is now a registered medical illustrator and teaches at City & Guilds of London Art School. Likening the exploratory dimensions of academic artistic practice to sending canaries down a mine, she is frustrated that we still have to justify this approach. She believes that research can be subversive and that the value of not knowing something should be reasserted.

Please note: This episode was recorded in 2018.

Links:

https://www.maa.org.uk/lucy-lyons

https://www.cityandguildsartschool.ac.uk/lucy-lyons/

https://www.medinart.eu/works/lucy-lyons/

Journal of artistic research (open access): https://www.jar-online.net/

Becky Shaw’s PhD, completed in 1998, was rooted in nursing research exploring sculpture as a ‘significant occupation’ for patients in palliative care. Through this collaborative work with occupational therapists, nurses and patients, Becky considered aspects such as the value of time spent with others on creative activity and the permanence of personal identity as carried through objects when the creator is no longer present. After further research on death and dying, Becky returned to working as an artist in social contexts and under Blair's government was busy with commissions. She later refocussed on teaching, having built a relationship with Sheffield Hallam, which Becky describes as seeing itself as an applied university where art design as a research method and interdisciplinarity are taken for granted. As well as continuing her art practice, Becky currently leads the PhD cohort in the Art and Design Research Centre – bringing together her interests in how arts practice meets the academy.

http://beckyshaw.net/CV

https://www.shu.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-profiles/becky-shaw

https://incertainplaces.org/artists/becky-shaw/

Following an anthropology degree, Emile began doing site specific performance; this led to an MFA in digital media and then a PhD in media philosophy. While his PhD was not practice-based, Emile continued doing interventions, participatory projects and performances as a way to research through practice. Emile retuned to academia after the life changing experience of working in New York during 9/11. He found an academic home in the interdisciplinary research context of the media studies department at Sussex University.

Emile's profile page

Barbie Liberation Organisation

Digital Contact Zones

In this episode Sophie talks to Lucy Wright who, in 2014, completed her PhD titled 'Making traditions, practising folk : contemporary folk performance in the Northwest of England : a practice-led enquiry'. They discuss the importance of creative uncertainty and how often people are talking at cross purposes when discussing practice research. Lucy reflects on her turn from ethnographer to artist. She talk about her precarious career in short term academic jobs, which rarely recognised her practice-led approach, and her recent decision to leave academia and become a freelance socially engaged artist and researcher. 

Lucy Wright's website

Professor Amanda Ravetz's profile page

Social Art Library, Axis

In this episode Sophie talks to Dr Rachel Hann who completed her PhD in 2010 from the University of Leeds in theatre and performance. The title of her PhD was 'Computer-based 3D visualization for theatre research: towards an understanding of unrealized utopian theatre architecture from the 1920s and 1930s'. Rachel talks about the importance of supportive, critical supervisors who motivated her to push her research forward. She refers to the influence of the principles of The London Charter for the Computer-based Visualisation of Cultural Heritage used by archeologists on her own methodologies and reflects on the importance of iterative approaches to research, and the need for a clear sense of intention.

Practice as Research in Performance (PARIP)

Utopian Theatres

The London Charter

PRAG-UK