Thinking Back, Making Forward: Artistic Research in Practice, edited by Brad Haylock, Jessica Wilkinson, and Charles Anderson, gathers thirty practitioners across art, design, architecture, creative writing, and fashion to examine honestly what the doctoral research turn has done to creative practice — the gains and the losses, the transformations and the resistances.
About This Book
Over the past three decades, creative practice disciplines have undergone a significant structural change: the PhD has arrived, bringing with it new institutional frameworks, new vocabularies, and new pressures on practitioners to articulate their work in academic terms. For some, the research turn has deepened practice, sharpened reflection, and opened routes into teaching and intellectual community. For others, it has introduced friction, abstraction, or a damaging instrumentalisation of the creative act. Through an open call, the editors assembled thirty contributions from practitioners willing to account honestly for the experience. The result neither celebrates nor dismisses the integration of research into practice, but takes it seriously — acknowledging, as the editors put it, the advantages and disadvantages of the creep of the PhD into artistic practice.
Key Features
- Thirty contributions from practitioners across art, design, architecture, creative writing, and fashion
- Selected through an open call — deliberately diverse in discipline, geography, and position
- Launched at Perimeter Books, Melbourne, July 2026
What You'll Discover
- How doctoral research has influenced the making and thinking of practitioners across creative disciplines
- The range of what artistic research can entail — from community-based practice to speculative design to theoretical writing
- Honest accounts of where the integration of research and practice has been productive, and where it has created tension
- The broader implications of the PhD's expansion into art schools, design faculties, and architecture departments globally
About the Author
Brad Haylock is a Melbourne-based designer and academic. Jessica Wilkinson is a poet and researcher based in Melbourne. Charles Anderson is a designer and researcher. All three are associated with RMIT University, Melbourne.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 456
- Dimensions: 22 x 17 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9789493246539
- Publisher: Valiz
- Publication Date: 2025
Perfect For: Artists, designers, architects, and academics engaged with practice-based research, doctoral education in creative disciplines, and the relationship between making and critical inquiry