Curriculum Information

This module establishes a basis for exploring and understanding the interconnected relationship between performance, writing and research practices. Students will consider themselves as a researcher engaged in a range of modes of knowledge exploration and generation, and in dialogue with a wider research field. As part of this they will explore theirs and others unique modes of processing, embodiment and expression of knowledge and develop strategies to creatively and critically utilise and develop these. From this basis the module will embrace cultural diversity, disability and neurodiversity and develop critical awareness of, and seek to dismantle, privilege in these areas. It will introduce concepts of knowledge formation such as phenomenology and embodied knowledge, and from this research methodologies such as practice research, case studies and autoethnography. It will position these alongside more traditional research approaches such as analysis of primary and secondary sources and develop methods to engage meaningfully with written texts such as books and journals.

The above will be explored through a series of practical workshops in which students will engage with a range of forms and modes of research to investigate areas of knowledge that are meaningful to them. They will work in ‘communities of research’ to explore the above concepts and methods in relation to specific research questions. Material for the first assessment will be developed during these workshops in which students will be encouraged to focus on their strengths and interests when researching, whilst also drawing on dialogue with their research community. This work will then culminate in a short work in progress live performance. Students will then be guided through a research process for the essay, focused on a common research question that is grounded in a practice research project that they all participate in.