What is it about?
When planning my Ph.D. I searched for guidance on how to incorporate my own professional experience as a radio practitioner into my academic work. Perhaps there would be a way of including some sort of audio/radio production in my research - to actually make radio content as a data-gathering method? I quickly found that theorizing this integration of professional or creative practice with research was tricky and that there was little agreement in the UK over the terminologies to use and the approach to take. When I came across the work of Australian academic, former radio practitioner, Mia Lindgren, many of my misunderstandings and insecurities dissipated. This article is my reflection on conducting and articulating practice-related research, based on my interpretation of Lindgren's 2014 article entitled ‘Radio journalism as research – a Ph.D. model’, in The Radio Journal (published in the Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 12:1&2, pp. 169–182.)
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Why is it important?
I hope my experience, and the thought-processes described here, help other research students working with their own creative or professional practice to articulate better the art and craft of academic research-through-practice.
Perspectives
As a PhD or doctoral student, whether already established as a teacher in the academy or totally new to the game, we are constantly challenged to define our research in quantifiable and impact terms. In the Arts and Humanities, this is especially challenging. Being able to intellectualize what it is that we are doing and why and how our actions are implicated, iteratively and dynamically, in the process of creating new knowledge, is so important. I'm a big believer in applying the skills and experiences from everyday life into the academic realm.
Dr Josephine F Coleman
Brunel University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A reflection on practice-related research – the case of radio journalism, JAWS Journal of Arts Writing by Students, September 2017, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/jaws.3.1-2.131_1.
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