{"id":710,"date":"2017-01-26T11:03:45","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T11:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/rpt\/?p=710"},"modified":"2023-10-06T10:42:53","modified_gmt":"2023-10-06T10:42:53","slug":"lost-nottingham-lost-phd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/rpt\/?p=710","title":{"rendered":"Lost Nottingham – Lost PhD"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"\nThe painter Cyrill Mann painting the Trent and the <\/pre>\n
now demolished Nottingham City Power Station c. 1939<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Even the best laid plans can have a fatal flaw.<\/p>\n
After a hard year applying I am no nearer a funded or even self-funded PhD with the Thames based ideas.<\/p>\n
Apart from the advice that very few PhD funding candidates over 50 now receive funding and if applying try having a sex-change I also came up against another fundamental problem.<\/p>\n
I well aware of the pitfalls and problems of so-called ‘practice-led’ Phd study. In fact I wrote a paper on it available<\/p>\n
HERE:http:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1177\/1474022213514548<\/a><\/p>\n
I also illustrated the great and the good’ take on ‘Artists with Phds’ edited by James Elkins for which I had to read every chapter.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/artwork\/?p=544<\/a><\/p>\n
So I more than familiar with the argument that a practice-led fine art Phd is essentially impossible and I would 90% agree.<\/p>\n
Most of the submitted fine art practice-led Phds thus far completed have been textual commentary on practice and nowhere do I see art objects which in themselves contain new knowledge as defined by the academy.<\/p>\n
It is a fascinating philosophical problem but there it is and it doesnt help gain funding.<\/p>\n
Does an art object of itself…a painting..a sculpture or a conceptual installation contain new knowledge which ‘transferrable’ NO..not unless it contains text…which funnily enough graphic novels and comix do….<\/p>\n
This brings me neatly to my problem with PhDs. I have spent a fruitless year banging my head against the walls of funded academia. As well as the age and gender problems which make it virtually impossible for a man of my age to succeed in the AHRC rat race for pennies I was pitching what essentially a ‘practice-led’ project at solid academic text-only departments.<\/p>\n
This reached its apotheosis in two recent meetings at Nottingham University. One in Geography the other in the English Department. In both cases senior academics were very supportive of all I trying to do and if I wished to self-fund (no longer an option as they say life got in the way) then I could do a historical Cultural Geography Phd no problem.<\/p>\n
What I could not get support for and this also happened at Lincoln too ( trad Art History only which ironic in an institution hell bent on destroying trad arts for money making ‘performance’ ends) is get support for a practice-led (poetry\/drawing\/graphic-novel) whatever the practice it that element that caused a shaky heady…. Traditional academia….i.e. the academy wants a rigorous 80000 words or it a no no.<\/p>\n
So new year back to square one. the only way I can see a practice-led PhD with the above caveats succeeding is by part of the PhD being comic\/graphic novel and therefore containing the transferrable knowledge. I played with this in a ‘Visual Paper’ (NO TEXT) I delivered at a drawing conference in New York again to a few shaky heads and non-publication in proceedings because ‘no text’ \ud83d\ude42 
That paper available HERE:
\u00a0https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/research\/?p=1135<\/a>\u00a0
along with animated short.<\/p>\n
At this point James Elkins kindly stated that he thought that I had done a PhD level of work in my M.A. for approaching the topic in the way I had but that ain’t the same as a real PhD. So I have got nowhere……<\/p>\n
Meanwhile I developing this ‘Backwaters’ research into a smaller non-PhD project or at least placing on the back-burner until things look more hopeful.<\/p>\n
Further details of Graphic Art and Comics Research on : https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/comicart<\/a><\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The painter Cyrill Mann painting the Trent and the now demolished Nottingham City Power Station c. 1939   Even the best laid plans can have a fatal flaw. After a hard year applying I am no nearer a funded or even self-funded PhD with the Thames based ideas. Apart from the advice that very few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,32,10,30,33,60,65,71,1,23,22,9,59,24,13,15,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-history","category-cartography","category-cultural-geography","category-design","category-drawing","category-exhibitions","category-graphic-research","category-illustration","category-journal","category-literature","category-painting","category-philosophy","category-psychogeography","category-regional-modernism","category-research","category-research-theory","category-river-trent","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/rpt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/rpt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/rpt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/rpt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/rpt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/rpt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/rpt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/rpt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/rpt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}