Doctoral (third cycle) studies

Doctoral (third cycle) studies have been offered at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts at the University of Gothenburg since the year 2000. There are currently 37 doctoral students registered on this programme.

Subjects

Doctoral studies primarily cover subjects where artistic work is, to a considerable extent, an integral part of the research project. At present, twelve doctoral subjects of this kind can be studied at our faculty. These are: Design; Crafts; Digital Representation; Independent Filmmaking; Fine Arts; Literary Composition, Poetry and Prose; Music Education; Musical Performance and Interpretation; Performance in Theatre and Music Drama; Photography; Photographic Representation. Doctoral subjects with a pedagogical/ didactical orientation can also be studied at our faculty. These include: Music Education; and Research on Arts Education - the latter oriented towards music, dance, visual art and general aesthetics.

Artistic dissertations

All students pursuing doctoral studies in artistic subjects within the field of the arts are professionals within their respective artistic disciplines. They bring with them questions and issues that came into being in their own artistic practice and that are reflected upon in a process of knowledge formation where practical and theoretical, and artistic and scholarly elements interact. The result is presented in the form of a doctoral dissertation that combines written presentation and artistic expression in a variety of ways. Therefore, artistic dissertations often differ from traditional doctoral projects in their outer form. Furthermore, the form individual artistic dissertations take can even vary considerably, which, in itself, reflects the multiplicity of knowledge traditions that exist within the artistic field.

Relations with the surrounding world

Artistic doctoral studies are a part of the academic world, and dissertation projects are often related not only to the aesthetic sciences but also to many other research disciplines within the natural sciences/technology, the humanities and the social sciences. At the same time, artistic research bears a vital relation to the public arts scene and the surrounding community at large. The dissertations that are produced within this still somewhat young field of research must therefore meet high qualitative standards and be of general interest in order to gain recognition within the research community and within the different artistic professions.

After the doctoral (Ph.D.) degree

One of the basic ideas of doctoral education in the arts is that doctoral students continue to practise their art not only during but also after their doctoral education. Thus, doctoral studies give the student both a deeper and broader competence that can result in a number of new openings upon graduation. These may include being a lecturer and researcher at a university, a director or an administrator at an art institute, a free artist, or, ideally, maybe a combination of several different activities. In this way, the insights and the skills that doctoral studies within the artistic field provide can contribute to bringing vitality and renewal to academia as well as to the public life of the arts.

The Faculty’s public
defences and doctoral theses

The Faculty’s public defences are advertised on a separate page. The doctoral theses are included in the Faculty’s ArtMonitor publication series, and may be ordered via the ArtMonitor web site.

To ArtMonitor