Doctoral degrees in the visual and performing arts are a fairly recent entrant in the research higher degree landscape in Australian universities. At the same time, a new kind of doctorate is evolving, a doctorate in which significant aspects of the claim for the doctoral characteristics of originality, mastery and contribution to the field are…

This article describes an investigation into the practice-based doctorate in the visual and performing arts, a genre that is still in the process of development. A key feature of these doctorates is that they comprise two components: a visual or performance component, and a written text which accompanies it which in some ways is similar to, but in…

Drawing from a larger study of doctorates in the visual and performing arts, we examine here the diversity of relations which can exist between the creative and written components of a doctoral thesis in these fields in terms of diversity of naming practices for these relations, institutional variation in guidelines and expectations, and…