epistemic practices:

(a new course in research methods)

 

 

This is a core module for all doctoral researchers working through the gradcam programme of study. Through a team-based and participatory teaching and learning process the researcher is presented with the opportunity to:

  • Acquire a specific set of core research competencies
  • Critically contextualise and comparatively analyse different research undertakings
  • Reflexively deploy critical research competencies in framing and planning the major research project
  • Acquire practical experience in research writing competencies
  • Develop practical applications of competency in communicating research undertakings to specialist and non-specialist audiences
  • Apply critical reflection skills in communicating key aspects of their major research project

 

See previous semester's programme here.

 

spring semester 2010

 

Sessions take place 10:00-13:00 and 14:30-17:30 in the GradCAM seminar room, John's Street.

 

  • Feb 11
    Afternoon Session starts at 2:30: Research Fundamentals (MW)

     

  • Feb 18
    Arts Research: Publics and Purposes Conference

     

  • Feb 25
    Morning: Researcher presentations (AC, SMcC, SB)

    Afternoon Session starts at 2:30:
    Disciplines and Disciplinarity: What is a Discipline? (LG and CA)
    (a) the organisation of knowledge: taxonomy; domain; field; and discipline etc.
    (b) professionalisation, the construction of “expertise”
    (c) multidisciplinary; interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary and cognate terms
    (d) Dr. Ciaran Allen 'Autobiography of a PhD - From Clinical Psychology to Sociology."




    Foucault Chomsky Debate. In Ciaran Allen's presentation he referenced Foucault and the tensions and relations between psychiatry, anti-psychiatry, psychology and sociology especially in terms of the knowledge/power couplet. In this famous TV debate, Chomsky and Foucault discuss conceptions of 'power' and Foucault outlines, in a summary fashion, a perspective on, for example, the institution of psychiatry as a knowledge/power system. The full text of this famous debate is available in published form. See http://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Foucault-Debate-Human-Nature/dp/1595581340 The relevance of Foucault, for our discussion of academic disciplines and interdisciplinarity, is multi-layered. Encountering Foucault, is encountering key changes in perspective, for example:

    1. the organisation and distribution of knowledges as apparatuses of power
    2. the broader conception of "disciplinarity" so that we shift from seeing the human subject as the author of systems of knowledge, and towards seing systems of knowledge as producing particular 'subjects', particular modes of selfhood, particular ways of authoring. Disciplines become then more emphatically systems of discipline (with the sense of discipleship, means ofcontrol, internalised limits etc.)
    3. the productive potential - as manifest in Foucault's own work - of breaking from the logic of a particular 'academic' discipline (interupting business as usual) and attending to "subjugated" knowledges or to what is overlooked and deemed trivial, or uninteresting (e.g. a philosopher investigating an historical transformation in the asylum system or prison reform in order to engage questions of epistemology or the theory of knowledge). Foucault makes clear that being alert to historical re-alignments in the organisation of knowledge is itself a way of challenging existing ways in which knowledge is managed, reproduced, distributed and so forth.

    There are some extracts from talks by Foucault online that will help to fill out the sense of "disciplinarity" in his work. They are as follows:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk9ulS76PW8
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EsEgwYdzlA

    And now for something different: An interesting discussion of pedagogy, public-ness and disciplinary surveillance, see this topic on a YouTube based teaching project. http://outsidethetext.com/trace/youtube-and-foucault/

    In our discussions at the close of the session, there were many different issues raised: the difficulties of negotiating so many 'master' theorists as encountered in general reading on contemporary culture (Marx, Freud, Bourdieu, Foucault, Derrida, and so forth, to name only a fraction of these); the uncertainty about where we are positioned currently in terms of academic discipline; the relationship between claiming to make an original contribution to knowledge and describing the current state of a given area or field; the problem of the 'dilettante' who may delight in lots of different ideas, disciplines, and authors, but achieve only superficial understanding and engagement and the promise of the interdisciplinary worker who achieves new and unexpected insights etc.(We might also add here the sometimes unquestioned valorisation of 'interdisciplinarity' without a clear critical consideration of why discipline distinctiveness might be very valuable and important.)

    One issue in particular bears further scrutiny. This is the question of how the production of research, and of a report on research, might better use the broad techniques, media and formats available to cultural producers (e.g., audio-visual databases, digital file archives, performance demonstrations, and so forth). This was especially marked as an issue in relation to working in a field that is not currently well established within the university system of disciplines. (e.g. improvised music performance). An example proposed was that as well as describing the written commentaries and debates on a given musical form or performance practice, one might actually use an archive of audio files to map the variety and current dispersion of a given field of musical performance. It was also pointed out that this very act of describing the current state of play of a given domain of practice was in itself a hugely important contribution to knowledge.

    It was also noted that one could organise the description of what is currently hapening in an area of knowledge, not by thinking solely of disciplinary identity (I am an anthropologist so therefore I must read only ....; I am a sculptor so therefore I must look only at ...) Instead, one might approach it from the 'object' of study vantage point and ask what are the main ways in which this 'object' (issue, theme, problem, debate, ...)Iam investigating is currently treated across the different disciplines and practices that take some position or perspective on this object. Often by assembling various conflicting perspectives on the 'object' of the enquiry, we might better understand the problem of defining or delimiting an 'object' of study. Indeed, sometimes the original contribution to knowledge is simply to give as full as possible a description of an 'object' (e.g., a debate, unresolved issue, previously neglected practice, etc.)

    The key issue here is that in claiming a PhD award, we are claiming to have made an original contribution to knowledge in some way. To make the claim and defend it fully, we have to establish two key things (i) there is an existing state of knowledge and (ii) that it is now in someway changed by our work. This is a very reduced and schematic statement of the task. Things are more subtle and variable in actual live research activity - however, the salient issue is that in claiming to know something 'new' we have to describe in some way shape or form what is already known. One way of doing this is to describe the state of play within our discipline with respect to the particular themes, object or topic of our research. Typically, we first have to do this in explaining why a particular research project should be started in the first place.

    Hence the mantra adopted by the School:

    1. what are you (we?) trying to find out?
    2. why is it worth knowing? ( for you? for us? for another?)
    3. how can you (we?) go about finding out?
    4. how will you (we?) know you (we?) have finished?
    These questions are again schematic and reduced. Stuff gets more fuzzy as we are working and immersed in lots of activity. However, precisely because focus gets lost, and work gets very complex and confusing, we return to these four simple, but hugely demanding questions. The questions are a prod to critical reflection on what we are doing so as to do it fully and do it well.

     

  • Mar 4
    Afternoon Session starts at 2:30: The Research Question (ES)

    Morning: Workshop: Where did the time go? Strategies for managing your time (ES)

     

  • Mar 11
    Research Lexicons: (quantitaive, qualitative, peer-review, case-study etc.) (MMcC)

    Morning: Workshop: How to construct an argument (ES)

     

  • Mar 18
    The Function of the Literature Review: Strategies and approaches (ES)

    Morning: Workshop: How to use sources effectively (writing and quotation) (ES)

     

  • Mar 25
    mid-semester break

     

  • Apr 1
    mid-semester break

     

  • Apr 8
    mid-semester break

     

  • Apr 15
    Afternoon: Ethnography (LG)

    Afternoon: Presentations

     

  • Apr 22
    Afternoon: Material Culture (LG)

    Morning: Presentations

     

  • Apr 29
    Afternoon: Cultural Studies and the Question of Method I (MMcC)

    Morning:

     

  • May 6
    Afternoon: Cultural Studies and the Question of Method II (MMcC)

    Morning: Presentations

     

  • May 13
    (ES)

    Afternoon: Presentations

     

  • May 20
    Commmunicatiions Practices for Resaerchers (ES)

    Afternoon: Presentations

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For additional information on the collaborating institutions consult www.dit.ie, www.ncad.ie, www.iadt.ie and www.ulster.ac.uk.