Research into Practice Group

Overview

Research into Practice (R2P) is a centre of excellence investigating the fundamental nature of research in the creative and performing arts.

It is an international collaboration co-ordinated by the University of Hertfordshire between Lund University, Sweden, Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, Brazil, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands.

The Group also has active links and collaborations in Europe and Australia.

Funded projects

The Research into Practice Group contains funded projects investigating practice-based or arts-based research.

Projects are staffed by postdoctoral researchers with a common interest in the theoretical and foundational aspects of advancement in the creative and cultural industries, and what it means to undertake research in these disciplines.

The projects aim not only to problematize these issues, but to offer models of how one might respond to them either in terms of methods or in terms of outcomes.

In so doing they provide scholarly resources for the academic community in art, design, architecture, and related subjects and a point of reference for doctoral studies. The projects contribute to the development of a robust framework for academic research in the arts and humanities broadly conceived.

Our philosophy

The Research into Practice Group’s philosophy is that research in the creative and cultural industries forms part of the larger context of academic research as a whole, both in University and elsewhere. Having this starting point facilitates research into practice, and research into research, because it enables comparisons with other arts and humanities subjects.

It does not prohibit the conclusion that research in the creative and cultural industries is quite different, but it does enable the construction of arguments as to the nature of that difference if found.

Whether different or not, descriptions of the nature of research need to be understood by the broader academic community in order to be respected and to have impact.

For this reason the Group attempts to use the language of academic scholarship to describe the essential features of research in emerging disciplines such as the creative and cultural industries, and to provide explicit arguments in response to the foundational issues that such studies raise.