The Art School PhD: What is the problem of knowledge?

This thesis is a comparative study of research undertaken by practitioners in art and design as part of a research degree (PhD, Doctor of Philosophy) in the UK, and was driven by the lack of clarity in regard to how artists make contributions to knowledge. The Coldstream Report (1960) is taken as a starting point because it put the art school on a path to the university and created a gap between art practice and its history and theory; a gap that serves as the context and inheritance of research in the arts. Where the discourse of research in the arts can be understood as addressing the problem of knowledge through theory, artists instead engage in a working through of this problem via practice, and therefore completed PhD theses exist as a critically under-used resource. However, it was crucial that this thesis aim at redressing artists lack of ownership in research in the arts on fair terms, rather than develop a model that resolves the problem of knowledge, because any top-down demarcation would only serve to delimit the potential of artistic practice.

The sample employed by this thesis consists of all thirty-two PhD theses produced by artists at Chelsea College of Art and Design from 1998-2013/14 and was supplemented by six ‘narrative research’ interviews. A basis for comparison was developed through engagement with the sample and used to structure a three-stage ‘discursive method,’ which was ultimately facilitated by consideration of ‘values.’ Due to ‘values’ providing a lens by which the problem of knowledge in the art and design PhD can be understood, an expanded discussion of the sample is proffered in terms of artistic identity, investigative activity and the character of evidence, and what is apparent epistemologically and ontologically. Consequently, a series of concurrent findings are put forward as a contribution to knowledge: the status of knowledge in research in the arts, evidence of deliberations of value by artists, and the identification of a play of forces in research. The findings of this thesis draw attention to how values are negotiated by artists as part of the art and design PhD, and crucially, claims that is a moving towards rather than a reaction to, the problem of knowledge, that grants artists ownership of research in the arts.