History

AVPhD was the name given to an AHRC funded training and support network for all those doing, supervising and examining audio-visual practice based doctorates, launched in September 2005. Its origins lay in a one day symposium in October 2004 at the University of Westminster, attended by more than 60 people from around the country and from abroad. Discussions with colleagues prior to the symposium had suggested that HE institutions were working with a number of different models of the relation between theory and practice, and with differing expectations about what is submissable at PhD level. So the 2004 event was designed to offer a forum in which academic staff could share information and debate ideas about supervising and examining ‘AVPhDs’. It was a lively and well attended day, and convinced us that more work was needed in this area.

As a consequence, we set up AVPhD to provide collaborative training provision for doctoral students (alongside supervisors and examiners), funded by the AHRC. For the last three years the AVPhD network has facilitated a multi-disciplinary research community of over 400 people, creating an accessible forum for those both inside and outside Higher Education. Beginning in the South-East in our first year we quickly expanded to the rest of the UK, hosting and supporting four one day and eight two day training events around the UK and Ireland.

The publication of a dedicated Journal of Media Practice (Vol 9: Issue 1), with accompanying ScreenWork DVD, and the celebratory Viva Viva event in December 2008, marks the end of our AHRC funding for this current phase of our work. Nevertheless we still intend to support and consolidate a sustainable AVPhD network for all those working in the field, and we have identified an ongoing strategic need to build the capacity of the (still relatively small) group of experienced AVPhD supervisors and examiners. We will continue this development of the network particularly through our website, as well as by encouraging more localised and regional initiatives to support supervisors, examiner and students.

Tony Dowmunt 2008