Values, Integrities, Principles: Stories of Navigation in Interdisciplinary Practice Research

This presentation explores the values and pedagogic experiences of several successful PhD researchers across several practice based disciplines, arts and technology, music, design and performance that studied at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. The presentation is based on commentaries and reflections by the researchers together with their supervisor Janis Jefferies and forms the basis of a contributing chapter to Practice Research eds. Graig Vear, Linda Candy and Ernest Edmonds, to be published by Routledge in 2021 and to which Jefferies is also a consultant. Integrated commentaries will discuss the journey of shaping a coherent thesis using both practice-based and more conventional qualitative methodological approaches. It will consider the challenges and opportunities of using practice-based methodologies in a thesis that is not categorized as practice-based or practice-led per se, and will ask, how can practical exploration feed into more conventional qualitative research methods to produce new knowledge? And how can different methodological approaches collate to respond to multi-faceted, multi-layered and complex questions, particularly in interdisciplinary research projects? It will address the question of how exhibitions and performances of co-designed artefacts can create new forms of new knowledge founded on ethical and research integrity and the role of public-facing artistic practises within the context of PhD research. It also places collaborators at the core of the practice based research process whilst recognizing the value of the individual practitioner. By addressing different modes of making, communicating informing practice, shaping stories co evaluate research successes and failures, co-constituting different publics.