interdisciplinarity & practice-based research: some REF 2014 dilemmas

Graham JefferyUniversity of the West of Scotland

uwscreative.wordpress.com

shaping our submission…

• Small-ish School in large university• Very wide range of work/disciplines within teaching &

research – media, film, performance, (commercial) music, digital art: fast moving, fast evolving (not the same school we were in 2008)

• Growing but inevitably patchy research activity, driven mainly by interest/expertise of individual academics (but with underpinning strategy)

• Lots of practice-based PhDs plus knowledge exchange activity plus extensive collaboration/partnership with arts/media organisations

strategy

• enhancing research environment/infrastructure• strong emphasis on interdisciplinarity – large

groupings of staff to develop critical mass• centre of gravity is UoA 36 (as that’s our heritage

as a “media” school): elements of submission could easily fit into other UoAs eg 34, 35 – but probably not enough volume to go in

‘on their own’

principles/problems/possibilities• ‘New knowledge’ - created at intersections of subject boundaries?• Convergence & contemporary cultural practices• Media is about mediation/communication – it’s a connective field

between disciplines• Media practice can be intensely collaborative and quality

production requires multidisciplinary expertise• So media/communications studies a hybrid field which constantly

services/interfaces with other fields• Artists, as well as scientists, conduct experiments – where are the

spaces for experimental/experiential modes of discovery/knowing – and what types of research projects/outputs demonstrate this?

guidance

• UoAs “do not have firm or rigidly definable boundaries” (38 - p 83)

To cross-refer or not to cross-refer? If so, how?• Institutions are “free to submit their research

in the way that represents the activity most effectively” (40 – p. 83)

How to represent the range ‘effectively’ within the container of UoA 36?

practice based work likely to be submitted (25% of submission?) may include

• New media art (Alison Clifford, Lumen Prize finalist)

• Curated exhibition/event on Cultural Hijack at Architecture Association, London (2013) (Ben Parry) – live event/exhibition, building on publication

• Outcomes from citizen journalism/participatory arts/media projects (eg Citizen Relay, Remaking Society)

• And - potentially - some radio/TV programmes, underpinned by extensive research – eg David Scott’s “Classic Scottish Albums” (BBC Radio Scotland commission)

Alison Clifford/Graeme Truslove: ‘interstitial articulations’

• http://vimeo.com/46141915• http://vimeo.com/26733648

Citizen media projects/participatory arts/media projects

• Odd Numbers project in Milton, Glasgow(AHRC Connected Communities pilot demonstrator: link to critical work on participatory arts practices and community regeneration/development)• Citizen Relay project : tracking the Olympic

torch across Scotland (link to critical and participatory work on mega-events, festivals and social media)

Innovative methodologies – but outputs submitted may be more reflective/conventional than practice/action based – how do we

document/account for research practice, especially when it is highly mediated?

coherence?

• Focus on research into production/action – impact?• Building on strengths as a post-92 institution with strong

vocational/applied tradition – but embedding this into critical/theoretical discourses

• Challenges of describing all of this as “media, communications, library and information management” – when it’s about a broader collection of interdisciplinary cultural practices

• How to develop a narrative that captures interdisciplinary strengths?

• Metanarrative: Creative Futures Research Institute

resolving the paradox…?

• Emphasising intermediality in contemporary cultural practices

• Is it risky to go for interdisciplinarity as key to submission when UoAs are about assessing outputs within subject boundaries, fields of knowledge?

• Are we going to be told that some of our outputs are submitted to the ‘wrong’ UoA? [internal/external debates] ?

• Mediated outputs – rooted in different disciplinary traditions: performance, cultural studies, fine art etc

• Being clear about the disciplinary field(s) outputs relate to

Keeping in touch

www.uws.ac.uk/cciwww.twitter.com/uwscreativeuwscreative.wordpress.comwww.creativefutur.eu

www.twitter.com/grahamjefferyGraham.Jeffery@uws.ac.uk