The Art School PhD: What is the problem of knowledge?

This thesis is a comparative study of research undertaken by practitioners in art and design as part of a research degree (PhD, Doctor of Philosophy) in the UK, and was driven by the lack of clarity in regard to how artists make contributions to knowledge. The Coldstream Report (1960) is taken as a starting point because it put the art school on a path to the university and created a gap between art practice and its history and theory; a gap that serves as the context and inheritance of research in the arts. Where the discourse of research in the arts can be understood as addressing the problem of knowledge through theory, artists instead engage in a working through of this problem via practice, and therefore completed PhD theses exist as a critically under-used resource. However, it was crucial that this thesis aim at redressing artists lack of ownership in research in the arts on fair terms, rather than develop a model that resolves the problem of knowledge, because any top-down demarcation would only serve to delimit the potential of artistic practice. The sample employed by this thesis consists of all thirty-two PhD theses produced by artists at Chelsea College of Art and Design from 1998-2013/14 and was supplemented by six ‘narrative research’ interviews. A basis for comparison was developed through engagement with the sample and used to structure a three-stage ‘discursive method,’ which was ultimately facilitated by consideration of ‘values.’ Due to ‘values’ providing a lens by which the problem of knowledge in the art and design PhD can be understood, an expanded discussion of the sample is proffered in terms of artistic identity, investigative activity and the character of evidence, and what is apparent epistemologically and ontologically. Consequently, a series of concurrent findings are put forward as a contribution to knowledge: the status of knowledge in research in the arts, evidence of deliberations of value by artists, and the identification of a play of forces in research. The findings of this thesis draw attention to how values are negotiated by artists as part of the art and design PhD, and crucially, claims that is a moving towards rather than a reaction to, the problem of knowledge, that grants artists ownership of research in the arts

Reading Peer Review

This Element presents the background contexts and histories of peer review, the data-handling sensitivities of this type of research, the typical properties of reports in the journal to which the authors had access, a taxonomy of the reports, and their sentiment arcs. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core

Reading Peer Review: PLOS ONE and Institutional Change in Academia

How do you change the world of academia and what insight can peer review provide into this question? The study of academic peer review is often difficult owing to the confidentiality of reports. As an occluded genre of writing that nonetheless underpins scientific publication, relatively little is known about the ways that academics write and behave, at scale, in their reviewing practices. In this book, we describe for the first time the database of peer review reports at PLOS ONE, the largest scientific journal in the world, to which we had unique access. Specifically, this book presents the background contexts and histories of peer review, the data-handling sensitivities of this type of research, the typical properties of reports in the journal to which we had access, a taxonomy of the reports, and their sentiment arcs. This unique work thereby yields a compelling and unprecedented set of insights into the evolving state of peer review in the twenty-first century, at a crucial political moment for the transformation of science. It also, though, presents a study in radicalism and the ways in which PLOS’s vision for science can be said to have effected change in the ultra-conservative contemporary university

Noradrenergic-dependent functions are associated with age-related locus coeruleus signal intensity differences

Abstract: The locus coeruleus (LC), the origin of noradrenergic modulation of cognitive and behavioral function, may play an important role healthy ageing and in neurodegenerative conditions. We investigated the functional significance of age-related differences in mean normalized LC signal intensity values (LC-CR) in magnetization-transfer (MT) images from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) cohort - an open-access, population-based dataset. Using structural equation modelling, we tested the pre-registered hypothesis that putatively noradrenergic (NA)-dependent functions would be more strongly associated with LC-CR in older versus younger adults. A unidimensional model (within which LC-CR related to a single factor representing all cognitive and behavioral measures) was a better fit with the data than the a priori two-factor model (within which LC-CR related to separate NA-dependent and NA-independent factors). Our findings support the concept that age-related reduction of LC structural integrity is associated with impaired cognitive and behavioral function

Interview on Reading Peer Review: PLOS ONE and Institutional Change in Academia

An interview for the New Books Network about Reading Peer Review: PLOS ONE and Institutional Change in Academi

Abstracts of the 3rd Annual Graduate Entry Research in Medicine Conference

This book contains the abstracts of the papers presented at The 3rd Annual Graduate Entry Research in Medicine Conference (GERMCON 2020) Organized by Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick in collaboration with Swansea University Medical School, Swansea University, Wales, UK held on 12–18 October 2020. This was especially important for Graduate Entry Medical (GEM) students, who have less opportunity and time to engage in research due to their accelerated medical degree. Conference Title: 3rd Annual Graduate Entry Research in Medicine ConferenceConference Acronym: GERMCON 2020Conference Date: 12–18 October 2020Conference Location: Online (Virtual Mode)Conference Organizer: Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, UKCo-organizer: Swansea University Medical School, Swansea University, Wales, UK Other Abstract Book of GERMCON: Abstracts of the 4th Annual Graduate Entry Research in Medicine Conferenc