Practice-led PhDs in arts and design have been developing within the last twenty-five years in the UK, with a particular surge within the last 8 years. Within the crafts and more specifically ceramics, practice based doctoral research is much newer with considerable growth in the last ten years.
Within the Ceramics and Glass department at the University of Sunderland there are currently 12 PhD students undertaking doctoral research in ceramics, all but one are engaged with practice-based research. The ceramics researchers work alongside 18 doctoral candidates in glass, thus creating a large and dynamic research environment, the largest in the UK and perhaps further afield, one that is particularly significant in terms of its discipline specificity.
The first practice-based PhD in arts and design at the University of Sunderland was completed in 1992 and hence, over the last twenty years a culture of practice-based research has been developed within the faculty. This has been crucial in terms of developing a research framework and environment for practice-based research together with critical evaluation drawn from completed research over the period. Crucially this has fed into research training and development for both students and supervisors.
This presentation will discuss examples of practice-based research being undertaken by ceramics researchers in the department and aim to demonstrate how this is reshaping ceramics practice and theory within an academic environment. Specific questions will be addressed in relation to what this means with regards to approaches to teaching and how relevant this is to re-thinking creative pedagogy in the age of the practice-based PhD.

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