The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts (Routledge Art History and Visual Studies Companions) - Softcover

"The practice-led PhD, which began in the U.K., is now ubiquitous in several parts of the world. As the doctorate becomes more settled in university life, it becomes increasingly important to reach a balanced understanding of its basic concepts, methods, and outcomes. What is artistic research? How does art create new knowledge? How can a PhD-level art exhibition be assessed for quality? This book is the first comprehensive look at concepts such as research, knowledge, creativity, the visual, experiment, quality, and assessment, as they are used in practice-based programmes influenced by the U.K. and E.U. models of higher education. Now that art is being taught in universities at the doctoral level, it may spur a fundamental rethinking of the university’s basic concepts of professionalism, community, and purpose. For that reason this book is also an irreplaceable resource for those interested in the coherence and idea of the university as a whole." James Elkins, The Art Institute of Chicago

"[T]his is truly not a book for the faint of heart. Given the still ill-defined - and even controversial - moment in this embryonic field, this book serves as somewhat of a manifesto for the needfulness of the discipline... It certainly deserves a place on the shelf of any art library." - Margaretta S. Frederick, Art Libraries Journal

The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts is a major collection of new writings on research in the creative and performing arts by leading authorities from around the world. It provides theoretical and practical approaches to identifying, structuring and resolving some of the key issues in the debate about the nature of research in the arts which have surfaced during the establishment of this subject over the last decade.

Contributions are located in the contemporary intellectual environment of research in the arts, and more widely in the universities, in the strategic and political environment of national research funding, and in the international environment of trans-national cooperation and communication. The book is divided into three principal sections - Foundations, Voices and Contexts - each with an introduction from the editors highlighting the main issues, agreements and debates in each section.

The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts addresses a wide variety of concepts and issues, including:

• the diversity of views on what constitutes arts-based research and scholarship, what it should be, and its potential contribution
• the trans-national communication difficulties arising from terminological and ontological differences in arts-based research
• traditional and non-traditional concepts of knowledge, their relationship to professional practice, and their outcomes and audiences
• a consideration of the role of written, spoken and artefact-based languages in the formation and communication of understandings.

This comprehensive collection makes an original and significant contribution to the field of arts-based research by setting down a framework for addressing these, and other, topical issues. It will be essential reading for research managers and policy-makers in research councils and universities, as well as individual researchers, research supervisors and doctoral candidates.