Practice-based PhD

We welcome applications from practitioners wanting to do practice-based or practice-led research. The practice may be in any field, for instance, fine art, art history, curating, design, engineering and technology, architecture, creative writing, musical composition, film, dance, and performance.   

For such a research project, the thesis should reflect a coherent research process, demonstrate a critical appreciation of the context of the research, its relationship to existing literature/practices and received opinion, and show that the research has produced an original contribution to knowledge. The relationship of this reflective commentary to the other forms of material submitted must be clearly articulated so that the work forms a single coherent body, considered collectively as the thesis. Within the thesis, the balance between the reflective commentary and the creative work, publications or equivalent plus the relative weighting given to each element, must meet subject-specific requirements and be agreed by the candidate's Faculty Research Degrees Committee.

The creative work must be undertaken as part of the registered research programme, not before. If you are interested in applying for a PhD that recognises previous work, please see our PhD by prior publication/portfolio.

Practice-based PhDs follow the same processes and are under the same regulations as our traditional PhD programme.

Read about our past and current research students and their research projects:

Research student case studies >

Current research student profiles >

How to apply >