STUDYING WITH CHRIS MULLEN
| The Research Group at Grand Parade - a guide for 2002
INTRODUCTION The University has clear guidelines on studying, your own role and the role of your supervisory team. There are examination and other procedures you should be familiar with by now. The documents are in the studio and are a matter of discussion as individual projects progress. Whenever you need to know about academic timetables, fee structures etc, please consult the University webpages, or in extremis the Academic Officer in the Centre for Research and Development. I write this paper to help you and consolidate advice. It is not for waving back at me in one hand, and the University’s procedures in the other, as a legalistic gesture. I have already circulated papers on 1. Research at PhD level. 2. Presenting your work. In 1996 the research students attached to the School of Design to which I was a supervisor were Jackie and Adele, Rus and Nabeel. The first two are completing, the latter successfully completed. The number of active students, students temporarily suspended and in the process of application is now unprecedented, at over 20 with a waiting list of potential applicants. The group has expanded to promote the corporate spirit and encourage self discipline; to promote the group spirit I see as so important to individual progress; I attach advice to you which will help us all in the next calendar year. I will circulate a term plan but note that • Jackie and Adele (PhD part time) will be completing in October 2002 • Pei Ying (PhD full time) also September 2002 • A series of thesis outline approval meetings and exhibitions will be from February (e.g. Ming Chang) • New students will be joining us - interviews for Annie, Megha and Steve with others. This paper will set down the possibilities for (not necessarily in this order)
........................................................................................... 1. OWNERSHIP -the project is yours. You have initiated contacts, applied to join us and are developing your project with us. The supervisory team will help and guide, encourage and criticise but the project is your project. Although I will do everything you can - you have the right to fail, to suspend, to take time out, to accelerate, decelerate... It is your Project. It is an advanced postgraduate award.
2. BLAME Feeling cross with yourself, you may choose to shift the blame elsewhere. Look out for this characteristic. It is a useful short term device but never terribly satisfying, and doomed to failure. There are many ways to prevaricate.
3. ORGANISATION. I take it as an established feature of your project that you are organised. As I supervisor I will not play the game of leaving it all to the last minute and then celebrating success while laughing in the face of failure. No theatricalities. Be organised. The phrase ‘studio based MPhil/PhD’ is not a license for the sloppy old ways you might have enjoyed in your Bohemian days. 3.1 systems On a weekly basis review your
3.2 words On a daily basis review your
TIP - make your own glossary of key words. This will particularly help when you start serious writing up, and ensure that your terminology is consistent throughout. 3.3 duplication On an hourly basis copy your words images digital information TIP - leave burnt cdroms / slides /texts /prints etc with someone whose house may not burn down. 3.4 information on a surface (your mind or a sheet of paper) The habit that hangs most oppressively over research and development at the level of a PhD award is the tyranny of the printed page in actuality and in your mindset. Challenge in yourself the need to amass lines of information and store them during and after synthesis in a sort of shopping list, starting upper left and finishing bottom right. This process is sued even by those who seek a traditional mode of expression for the research project. I always advise on the fluid representation of information and its sequences - using the double page spread - making clusters of information in a radial pattern on the page. This latter device allows you to add subsequent thoughts without wrecking the order on the page.
4. TITLE. At any time of the day or night you should have an automatic machine in your head that can recite the exact title and sub-title. When developmental work allows/insists be ready to re-memorise the title and sub-title.
5. AIMS. Similarly you should be able, whenever necessary, to summarise your aims. This is required because activities change, but aims should not change without negotiation.
6. COMMUNICATIONS. Arrange your own contacts and resources. I will try and make this easy for all. It is up to you to keep abreast of what happens. Ask each other. Check constantly. CM has circulated everybody’s email numbers.
6.1 Emails from CM - when an email arrives, immediately confirm to Chris it has done so. Don’t delay to write back in detail. That could come back later. 6.2 Emails to CM - Write in email box wherever possible.If you send an attachment write in Claris or Word or in the email box. If you are sending images, send them as low level JPEGs with clear captions, indications of actual size, and no bigger than 300 k. If you send a quark document make sure it is not to big. If you want advice on text or image, make clear what is expected of me. I will confirm your message has arrived and possible date of reply. 6.3 Tuition over the Internet - If you are developing a website over the Internet in consultation with me. it is not good enough to say “I have been adding to my website” - (Jean and Rick) because
6.4 Design standards and the website. Your website is not a surrogate book nor a brantub of goodies. It has to have a coherent structure, exhibit the highest standards of literacy and demonstrate clearly that you exploited the strengths of the medium e.g.
7. STUDY PATTERNS 2002 7.1 group presentations - already Grahame and Jo Chieh. Steve Long and Ming Chang to come. Start working on yours now. 7.2 guest presentations - Jayne Wilson, David Watkin, Barbara Loftus’ studio. 7.3 tutorials - see beneath 7.4 MA lectures - the list will be posted each term.You are welcome to go to these lectures in Circus Street, usually at 5.00pm. After every presentation, ask yourself what you have learned from it - how advice affects your own project - what you would have done in the circumstances. When attending a presentation, your first impulse must be to help the presenter. At the right point make suggestions, but not before you have an accurate idea of what the project is about. 7.5 GROUP MEETINGS WITHOUT CM These meetings happened previously and ought to be sustained and built on in ways as yet unimagined. If you are feeling uneasy about your project it is often all too easy to shelter behind a series of group meetings - to prevaricate. Everything must be harnessed to your own understanding of yourself. TIP Develop these meetings in the year and report back to CM what progress as made. 7.6 PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS CM will see Bill Beech and try and establish a regular annual show of PhD work in September - perhaps in conjunction with MA work. 7.7 WEBSITE CM will start a group website which may be linked to a general research website at Grand Parade. This website will carry indicative images you have made or value, to help in the basic understanding, but also to help in recruitment. It will help students working abroad keeping in touch (e.g. Mana and Rick, Jean and Soon Sun). 8. TUTORIALS with Chris Mullen. From January 2002 8.1 book them a week in advance by email or at a group meeting 8.2 and do so with a short list of points you want to raise 8.3 the tutorials will be 30 or 45 minutes but regular apart from those students requiring particular attention (JB AC PYW) 8.4 they could be at 193 Ditchling Road, but, more likely in room 254. Check. If you are in the room respect other people’s tutorials taking place. Remember room 254 is Chris Mullen’s office so he is not available without a booked time. Be understanding if he can’t chat, and gossip even if bribed with biscuits.
9. GENERAL - CM’s role Do not assume he lies dormant, waiting to be activated in your service. You may not know but he does things other than those you observe him performing. 9.1 recruitment - I am in touch with people interested in joining us as a research group. I will help anybody improve their application form - the title, references, articulation of intent. 9.2 teaching in distance mode - Rick and Jean. This means I work on images and texts over the Internet and prepare students for summer visits. I edit text from websites and ask awkward questions. 9.3 first supervisor to 15 MPhil/PhD students in the School - over twice the national recommendation. I undertake this weight of work not because I am a masochist but because the research group works better if larger and works in a mutually supportive mode. Although not stipulated in the procedures I give you a written resume of each tutorial with references and advice which is copied to the Centre for Research and Development. 9.4 second supervisor to 2 students from other parts of the Faculty, helping and supporting education beyond the MA in Architecture/Interior Design and elsewhere 9.5 second supervisor to 1 student at Portsmouth University, keeping a perspective outside the University of Brighton 9.6 academic contacts with Kingston University, which is just starting to arrange MPhil/PhD level education. 9.7 I also teach multimedia to undergraduate students in Design and Illustration 9.8 I lecture to groups of MA students at Grand Parade I am also required as part of my contract to be Research Active although the two days I have been allotted during the week have to be made up during the Vacation. TIP - if you want me or a task, book well in advance. I may well be spending days looking at Jackie’s script (argument, captions, writing the abstract, balance of text and image, editorial consistency etc) or going frame by frame through Adele’s film (editing, pace, content, relationship to title, aims....) If in a previous academic life, you had instant access to academic supervision - a PhD is different. We assume you have a momentum, and require a tutorial at certain vital points in the timetable. Be considerate.
10. Learning materials - books and videos. YOURS, CHRIS’ AND THE LIBRARY. Again, with a size of group we have we need to be organised in access to research materials. Always use St.Peter’s House as your first call. Then ask in the group session, then ask CM. 10.1 CM has acquired books and films over the lst 8 years with a particular relevance to study at this level - with an emphasis on multi-cultural symbolism, on screen based design and illustration solutions. He has his own collection of video programmes on animation, image and object making. Many of them cannot be replaced. The video film is a useful aid to improving your understanding of spoken and written English. I recommend the Open University documentaries on a variety of subjects. These will help your general understanding of art and design issues, and allow you to develop your own glossary of technical terms. TIP there will be a new definitive list of borrowing and returning the books and films borrowed from CM in room 254. You will be expected to fill this in and check off returns. Try and return books borrowed from CM’s house to the house itself. 10.2 CM has provided dictionaries and thesauri in the studio with subsequent additions after various presentations. These are not to be taken away. Make sure you have your own access to your own dictionaries and thesauri at home. When we mention crucial texts (Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology and James ~Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake will be made available for the term in the studio. 10.3 YOUR OWN RESEARCH LIBRARY. Jackie and Adele have benefited from their own research libraries, first hand material and reference works. Those of you who speak and write English as a second language need material of this kind easily available without a long trip to the library. If you are part-time and are fitting studies in around a job, materials at home for comfortable work in the evenings are vital. Sometimes you might like to work during extended periods in the vacations, or at night. A familiarity with the WWW and the use of search engines is a distinct benefit.
11. THE STUDIO BASED RESEARCH DEGREE/ PRACTICE BASED PhD award; some helpful indicators about writing and making Here you will find my own attitudes which may be tempered by other supervisors, advisors, and will be superseded by the University’s own protocols and procedures. 11.1 remember that the weighting can be varied in percentage terms as the project develops. The weighting reflects developments in the project. You may develop the visual portfolio in ways as yet not anticipated; aspects of the written analysis may suddenly get more important. TIP keep a weekly account of how your thinking/practice changes. In your sketchbooks/diaries record your thinking - diagrams as well as words. When in doubt where you stand, bring your assessment to your supervisor. 11.2 Don’t falsely separate the image making from the writing. They are to be seen as closely linked. Advances in one should be matched by the other, not necessarily in the same order each time. 11.3 look out for examples of how people handle the studio based PhD at other centres of learning. Meet people at conferences and find out their own practices and procedures. 11.4 what standards of writing are expected of a studio based PhD ? well, it varies. Your written component is easily achieved at 40,000 words which is not forbidding to a visually orientated research student. I do not expect the full declamatory, explicatory and analytically sophisticated style and process of argument I would expect of an exclusively text-based historian or sociologist. But I do expect
TIP Think about your notational systems - the ideal for me is the appropriate balance of sketch and keyword to capture and store the thought. 11.5 the balance of creative frenzy and bureaucratic plodding - a caricature this phrasing, but several research students have found it useful to have a twin track approach to the development of their project - making and processing. Just because it is a PhD award, it doesn’t mean that
Sometimes you may not feel the images/objects are coming together or developing as you would wish, and it is useful to get on with an activity that keeps your momentum up - e.g. an electronic sketchbook to be maintained, a logging system for books and other references, adding captions, designing a page layout etc. The very act of organising might allow the creative problem to be solved by
I do expect a regular progress and, given the level of achievement expected of a PhD, it is a mistake to leave the work for long. Not everything can be achieved by a delay to a period of intensive work during a vacation or time set aside. SUSTAINED WORK The key is to sustain the work, and realise that even analytic thought in a bus going home after work can be seen as project work. This is a point I emphasise over and over again. It is difficult for people who see the studio as the major arena for their activities to see this. I remind you of Kipling who constructed his own memory palace on the bus going home after work, half on land an half out to sea - adding new rooms and arcades as they were needed. RESEARCH -remember previously circulated paper on what the act of research can be at this level of working . INTERVIEWS - these can be formal interviews that are to be included in your thesis - fellow practitioners - people who have commissioned similar work - people who will use your on-screen learning (Rus, Rick);
MEMORY - I believe it essential that you do not resign yourself to “having a poor memory”. You must, from the very outset, develop your memory as if it were a bicep or your singing voice.
The latter technique sometimes known as the Spider Chart is, I find, useful in adapting information flow to the screen and sequence of screens. Tenaciously holding to the page metaphor on screen leads to fixed and rigid patterns of display that disregard the possibilities inherent in the new media. • TIP work at your memory of images and then images in sequence - when you tried to memorise a painting by Rubens, what did you miss out when you came to recall it ?
12 Multimedia Equipment and project work We have recently acquire a G4 Mac with printer and scanner and external speakers. This is intended for your use and not MA students. It will have Photoshop, Director, Dreamweaver, Final Cut Pro, Fireworks and various other applications for animations, information packages and video editing. For extended periods of work on the machine, please book with CM. The manuals will be kept secure and will not leave room 254. Each application has its own digital manual within. Please provide your own blank cdroms and zip disks. We have a G4 Powerbook on which you can load your project work for public display at Circus Street and elsewhere. It is available for your presentations at conferences. Book well in advance. I do recommend your becoming familiar with the new Technologies. I list the levels of achievement in ascending order... 12.1 word processing. This allows you to send me drafts which I can correct and send back for direct and immediate addition to the master draft. Similarly I can recommend references which again can be pasted in. 12.2 email allows you keep in touch with each other and to give me notice and send me drafts and images 12.3 scanning allows you to keep your own archive of appropriate imagery and, using a word scan, converting crucial texts to raw digital information Scanning images from rare books and inter-library loans is useful. Make sure you keep accurate details in caption form which can be applied as text to the Photoshop image itself. 12.4 World Wide Web, using a Search Engine (google.com, altavista.com) search weekly for information which can be saved as a screen grab or “SAVE AS” in html, and stored. 12.5 a website, I intend to make a website for each student this term to store the thesis titles, key research concepts and definitive imagery from beyond your own work. Thus will help each of you to define your own project but also help us in recruitment. FIREWORKS, DREAMWEAVER and a Browser (Netscape Navigator) 12.6 multimedia presentations. It may be an idea to be aware of the possibilities of showing your work in a simple/complex programme beyond the prosaic possibilities of Powerpoint, that favourite programme used at conferences. Use Director 8.5 - you can then make the best of sound, animation and three dimensional simulation of space, with the possibility of using Shockwave to make it available in compressed form for the Internet. See also Macromedia FLASH. I have a route map of the standard applications and how they inter-relate available if needed in the studio. Remember - the new technologies are there to help communication not not inhibit you. They seem an appropriate a development for research that stresses the Visual. They do encourage your taking charge of your own presentations and to devise storage methods.
13. The larger academic community. Contacts and Opportunities. 13.1 The University. We have links with other schools in the Faculty, and through the Certificate of Research methodology, you encounter other research students from a range of disciplines. I have made my opinion clear that the CRM has, in the past, not paid sufficient note of aspects of visual culture. This matter is in hand. Our own group meetings ensure that this balance is redressed. 13.2 Conferences. We encourage you to research available opportunities for yourself to present your project work. For many of your audience you will represent their first encounter with the studio/practice based MPhil/PhD. Please inform Chris Mullen of your activities and successes which will be listed and will help potential applicants understand our ambition. 13.3 Outside research students and contacts. There is the possibility of meeting other researchers, e.g. visiting Korean professors from Kingston University. The Visual telling of Stories database, which we use for distance learning and recruitment, has had a link with the Images in Practice network at the University of Portsmouth, and through this to UNICEF, and the architect/designer Eric Kuhne. 13.4 Specialists. If you have specialist areas of research we ask you to identify these and help us establish contacts who might help you. This might include an advertising agency where you might conduct interviews (Jackie), a contact in the industry (Adele - film), science (Sari and relativity). PeiYing has recently arranged consultations with avid rain, to help her understanding of a literary text.
14. The Supervisory Team. You have a first and a second supervisor. Your first supervisor is your first and usual contact. You will meet your second supervisor when the first supervisor believes it will be useful to the progress of your project. Second supervisors receive an annual fee and this will cover only a finite number of contacts, many of which will be better served later on in the project. Please bear this in mind if you want more time with your second supervisor- they are not largely salaried staff. Jonathan Woodham is available for consultation if you feel your supervisors are not understanding you, or in the belief that some element has been unfair. Consult Chris Mullen so he knows, but it will be your choice and reflect a difficult issues.
15. Student Services If you need any help and advice, the Student Services department at Grand Parade is underused and very helpful (J.Batey). The Students’ Union is also available, as is the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Surrey Street, Brighton (near the Station).
16. The Library Find your own way around St.Peter’s House. Remember that there are other sites to which you have access. Books can be ordered from the catalogue on line. You also have access to the library of the University of Sussex. Certain books can be requisitioned on Inter-Library Loan but this is a restricted service. Several students have found that they can find a copy somewhere or look in at Amazon.com. In the long run, a book you own will be particularly over the long period of writing up. TIP From the outset, decide which books, films etc it would help you if you had copies to hand day and night.
17. Presenting Drafts and a Guide to Editorial Style. Page and Screen possibilities. 17.1 Presenting drafts. Make sure you know what the draft is meant to achieve. Don’s submit it to ease your conscience. Negotiate an agreed set of aims for the draft. Be clear how it fits into the whole. It helps if the draft is word processed and you attach the digital text as well as a hard copy. Make sure the draft has the following elements
It is good practice to produce drafts as polished as possible. Don’t just offload your difficulties in using written English on to the supervisor concerned. Be clear in your own mid how the drafts relate to each other. OF COURSE you will have an organised way of storing the hard copy, and an effective way of storing the digital information (in duplicate). Perhaps the entire structure of your thesis could be assembled on screen and printed off only when needed. A draft can be defined as a specific task where you assemble words and images to advance the developmental stage of the thesis. It does not necessarily mean a formal written chapter, but can, with your supervisor’s agreement be a format of draft appropriate to the aims, e.g.
17.2 A Short Guide to Editorial Style From the beginning, get into good habits when notating references you have found useful. You don’t have to list every book in the appropriate discipline. Be selective. remember that there is reading and reading. You don’t have to have read every page to qualify for making it a footnote. Take what you want from books, but save the references. Don’t pack footnotes for the sake of it. Experiment with indicative reference lists where the categories you choose are important, and you give five indicative titles to help others to understand your paths of research. This will be the case with animated films by a particular artist, or websites for instance. 17.1 Books author, title (italics or bold) , publishing house, date. e.g. Eric Partridge, The Gentle Art of Lexicography [main title] as pursued and experienced by an addict [subsidiary title] Andre Deutsch, London, first edition 1963 Remember that the publishing history of a book or play might be very important for understanding, so the dates of publication and subsequent editions are important. The published is important - Deutsch tended to sponsor more daring books. Or the book may be printed at the author’s cost - privately printed. The place of publication may mean that the idea began in the UK rather than America. Think how the chosen format looks on screen as well as on the page. This will matter if much of the written section is on a cdrom where italicised text is not clear in some sizes and fonts. 17.2 Articles quoted e.g. quoted in Walter Gratzer (ed.) The Longman Literary Companion to Science, Longman, London 1989, p. 132 M.L.Oliphant, “Reminiscences of Lord Rutherford” (from Notes and Records of the Royal Society, Vol.27 No.1) 17.3 films e.g. the basic information should convey the name of the film, the director’s name and the date of issue (and re-issue) but remember you may need to draw some attention to a special feature in editing, costume or sound. Make sure you record the names of these individuals. e.g. Cape Fear, directed by Martin Scorcese (1991) Technicolor, Panavision, 128 minutes (after the novel The Executioners by John MacDonald, edited by Thelma Schoenmaker with music by Bernard Herrman, music direction by Elmer Bernstein after the original score (1961), photographer by Freddie Francis, with the actors Robert de Niro, Jessica Lange and Nick Nolte. 17.4 multimedia and website numbers It is now good practice to detail the application you may have used for Multimedia work eg • the images were scanned at 300dpi and saved in ADOBE PHOTOSHOP 5 as jpegs • they were imported into MACROMEDIA FIREWORKS 3 • and assembled for the World Wide Web in MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER The website also includes Shockwave Movies and GifBuilder imagery. See Constance Hale, WIRED STYLE Principles of English usage in the Digital Age, Hardwired, London 1996. See the technical glossary in particular. [URL = universal resource locators] quote this to the full e.g. http://www.adh.bton.ac.uk/schoolofdesign/MA.COURSE/16/GP/menu.htm 17.5 scholarly abbreviations and protocol Recommended reading for consultation Hart’s Rules for Compositors and Readers at the Oxford University Press, OUP , Oxford, New York, 1983 [1984] - see particularly the regime for correcting and marking up text. Individual scholarly publications often have their own rules, as will those responsible for the publication of conference papers. Several of you have found that these are made available even before you prepare your papers. Many terms are in Latin see Eugene Ehrlich, Nil Desperandum A Dictionary of Latin Tags and Phrases BCA London 1992 In the course of your reading over the period of your research you will encounter the following and their ilk. They are useful as indicators within your text. sic idem. et al. corrigenda ibid. etc. e.g. i.e. curricula vitae fl. (usually in italics) as well as p. pp. 17.6 Constituent parts of your thesis It is possible to use any permutation of these possible sections and sub-sections to do justice to the material you have assembled as the written part of your thesis or even the multimedia shell selected. For the mandatory sections see student handbook and the University’s procedures and regulations. • titlepage ; • contents page; • acknowledgments; • list of illustrations; • introduction; • the rules of the game (protocol of captions, media, size in centimetres, collection and provenance, pagination rules, underlining or bold for titles etc etc); • the ‘chapter’ structure (if chapter seems too literary a concept, find your own unit of measurement, particularly if the information unfolds on screen - section and sub-section, part and sub-division etc); • glossary ( this is think vital to ensure your reader can consult a list of fundamental definitions, particularly if you are working in the new media); • a chronology - this allows you to establish a clear chronological context in which your own work or its influences can be seen. It can also be a convenient repository of information you don’t want in the major text or even the footnotes; • references, this can sum up the range of your reading and study (see editorial style and also scholarly abbreviations) - a complete and systematic list n the reference section can also mean that you can use a shortened form in the major texts and in the footnotes; • plates / figures/ illustrations - perhaps integrated within the page/screen or included at the end of the thesis. Always indicate what proportion of the original illustration you are showing us. It may be a complete bleed, or a small detail of the original- we have to know. • format - it is likely that your thesis will not necessarily conform to the A4 bound format in portrait format. If you intend to challenge the basics, it is courteous and wise to consult the Research Development Centre well in advance, bearing your supervisor’s own support in the matter. I recommend you consider a landscape format from the beginning if you are considering film and computer screen images which are uniformly in a characteristic aspect ratio. Although you are encouraged in the University’s own procedures to print on one side of the paper, the advantages of the double page spread as a vehicle for the presentation of information, are a generally available option for the designer. Put your case for the design of your thesis early and keep your supervisor informed at all times. If your own studio based work is carefully presented on carefully chosen surfaces with carefully calculated spaces around and within, it seems to me a loss of opportunities to disregard the design of the written part. The opportunities of writing to screen, with all the advantages of colour, sound, animation and instant navigation need to be carefully considered and argued. 17.7 footnotes. The footnote is a vital element in the preparation of your texts. It serves a number of purposes; • to give clear source to a fact or assertion or quote • to encourage the clear flow of the narrative/analysis in the text itself - the full details of references, dates etc • to add supplementary information which is important but which might slow the pace of the written argument. If you are frustrated that a good joke or amusing image must be attached but you don’t know where, the footnotes is the place. The author of Colour and Turner write a text of 33% of the book - the footnotes providing the rest. The footnotes are easily managed within your word processing programme, and can be added to the foot of each page, or gathered at the end of each section. 17.8 the Abstract.At a date well in advance of examination you will prepare an abstract of your thesis which will, in stately and formal prose sum up your achievement. This will be distant and authoratative in tone and say what has happened, not what you hoped to happen. This is a welcome and important as a final exercise to sum up after all that work and worry. The Abstract will go before a formal University committee which will decide whether it is acceptable and appropriate to the level of study. 17.9 Designing on-screen and on-page This is an area of possibilities as yet uncatalogued and undiscussed. It is a useful rule of thumb at the moment that the style and protocol of page design should transfer automatically to the screen. There are difficulties in signifying sounds and indicating roll-over within multimedia. Please catalogue the differences between page and screen design, it will help an international debate. It will concentrate our minds on working towards a paper-free design environment, and stretch the possibilities that multimedia will provide in the way of sound, animation, and particularly the role of colour (and changing colour) in structural coding and navigational devices impossible in print.
18. Examination, Appeals and Discontent. Check your student handbook that the procedures have been followed in the stewardship of your project e.g. thesis outline approval, language proficiency, strong recommendations, first supervisor not supporting your intent, writing the abstract. There can be no appeal against academic judgments. It is a useful rule of thumb to consult the Academic Officer (Ingrid Pugh has now left the job which is pending at the time of writing). Remember that certain parts of your thesis experience cannot be approved there and then, but will have to be presented as recommendations to a research committee at a higher level. For instance your supervisory team may identify excellent and appropriate examiners, but the names and curricula vitae will have to be sanctioned by the University research Committee. Don’t immediately assume that, just because we aim for informality at most times, there is no formality within the proceedings. Take this into account when you are working towards an examination timetable. Remember that none of the Supervisory Team can contribute to the examination process at viva voce. Your first supervisor will sign a document that he/she considers the thesis to be complete and ready for examination.. Your First Supervisor can attend in observer mode, but I always refuse to do so because the candidate must be free of any shadows of the supervisory, knows he/she is on his/her own, and can develop ideas without inhibition at viva voce. Several students had got too content with me helping directly say at Thesis Outline Approval. The examination is very different. For any other queries look at your student handbook, the University regulations for examination or consult with the Academic Officer. Make sure you understand what is entailed by a VIVA VOCE, the oral part of the examination where you explain and defend your thesis in English. We do our best in supervision, in stewardship, in development and examination. We stick closely to rules but try, using academic discretion to do the best for your project. This is not an easy process for the aspiring research student. A PhD award recognises excellence in all matters and insists on innovation. See BLAME above. AFTER Assuming you are awarded the MPhil or PhD you will be invited to a later ceremony of investing the award. You are also asked to keep in touch and report any subsequent reception and display of the project. If you are worried about the copyright of your work, please consult the Academic Officer who will clarify the University’s attitude as then established. In my experience there have been no complications here, as the University wants you to succeed and to cast golden reflections on its postgraduate courses.
19.SUSTAINING LEVELS OF SPOKEN AND WRITTEN ENGLISH It is tempting to relax and be content with the levels approved at interview at application. Keep working at understanding and expression. Read English texts regularly as recommended by your Supervisor - theoretical texts, letters, and (my recommendation) poems by contemporary writers where you can concentrate on shorter texts and levels of meaning (Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath and Roger McGough). Even when working outside the UK, keep listening to the BBC World Service News. My major fear is that you will think that an appropriate level of spoken and written English can be acquired at the last minute. It should be a matter of day by day practice - little by little. GENERAL - CM’s Observations and Interpretations. The PhD is the highest academic distinction to which most people can aim, although there are Post-Doctoral fellowships and other appointments. It represents innovatory work of the highest order with an historical and theoretical understanding of the contextual issues. At Grand Parade we place particular emphasis on the understanding of Visualization, the generation, cultivation and enrichment of mental images prior to image/object making. We have identified multimedia solutions as our particular strength and the object of our fascination. This is to give the group a focus although not an exclusive one. Above all, we believe in helping your progress rather than constructing barriers over which you must climb. We want at all stages the highest standards of scholarship and the generation of imagery. We believe this can be achieved not as a solitary pursuit but as part of a group effort of making and understanding, where the tutorial experience can be shared, can be generated among peers, in an atmosphere and culture that nevertheless enables and empowers the individual irrespective of gender, race and physical ability. Furthermore the representation of so many nationalities within the group encourages the broadest and meaningful understanding of cross-cultural issues in the spirit of debate. Chris Mullen These are my own opinions and examples of the advice I have given to many students at this level over the last ten years. Please check that your final decisions are informed by the University’s own published procedures and rules, copies of which are also available in room 254 which will supersede and prevail. .................................................................................................................................................... THE LITANY - a forlorn history of familiar excuses • prevarication- “ I will get round to it after I have fixed the radiators...” • the key book- “Everything will be fine when I read this book-it is the key to everything...” ditto - the conference paper that has changed my life. •delay - “It’s not quite ready yet... I’ll send you an email...” • obfuscation - “ I don’t want to write because I am doing too much printmaking at the moment...” • romantic experiences “ I need to go away and be alone on the shore...” • pathetic modesty ” I feel so GUILTY....” or “ I am so damn feeble...” • masochistic “I do need a kick up the bum...” As I said at the beginning, it is your project and it is indecent to have to chase you up. .................................................................................................................................................... IF YOU NEED please communicate with the Centre for Research and Development Grand Parade....... with A.Kampalis@bton.ac.uk
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