OPEN CALL:Konstfack University Seeks Four Doctoral Students For The Doctoral Programme: Art, Technology and Design

The Art, Technology and Design doctoral programme takes the form of a collaboration between Konstfack, the University of Arts, Crafts and Design and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. The programme takes as its point of departure issues relating to climate impact, urbanisation, migration, widened social and economic divides and diminishing availability of natural resources. These major social challenges make substantial demands in terms of new approaches and process-orientated, holistic thinking. The objective of the Art, Technology and Design doctoral programme is to contribute to sustainable social development and the shift required by such development, with a radical new approach to the relationship between the individual, society and the environment. Artistic research and investigation are regarded here as an essential component in this development in the direction of sustainable societies. The programme is interdisciplinary, i.e. integrating knowledge and perspectives from different disciplinary research domains and activities

We are seeking highly qualified applicants with a strong motivation for third-cycle education and a desire to contribute to development of a new knowledge within some of the areas of study described below. The research programme as part of the Art, Technology and Design programme is shaped by the meeting between artistic and scientific approaches, and by the collaboration between three different perspectives: art, technology and design. In particular, we are seeking applicants who wish to unite the practices of action with advanced epistemological and methodological perspectives. Konstfack, with its well-equipped workshops and personnel with specialist skills and knowledge, offers unique opportunities for developing knowledge from practice. The studies take the form of course and seminar activities alongside work on individual research projects.

The four positions for doctoral candidates that are sought for can be placed at one of the departments’ four different directions. Please submit your application to one of the following specialised directions:

PhD Design
We are looking in particular for applicants who are engaged in the field of design, and have experience in industrial, product, interaction, service or experience design, or in a design field with emphasis on three-dimensional form-giving and materialization. You have an inquiring practice that is propositional and result-oriented. A practice that is speculative and theoretically informed, that is experimental while caring for detailed materialization. You, who have a taste for relational thinking and doing with sensibility for the political and ecological implications of design work. You who would like to challenge and speculate upon, through a design-driven practice, forms of cohabitation for humans and other-than-humans.

PhD Visual arts and/or sloyd education
We are looking, in particular, for applicants who are engaged in socially oriented practices within the fields of visual arts and/or sloyd education.

The Department of Visual Arts and Sloyd Education conducts research in the fields of visual culture and learning, also including material, virtual and digital cultures. The overall disciplinary research domain is educational sciences, though the department is active both in education and research in an interdisciplinary environment. Connections are made to art, technology and design—including designs for learning—but also to subject-specific didactic issues.

We are now seeking applicants with training and experience in visual arts and sloyd education or related fields and who have a clearly expressed interest in researching didactic challenges, expanding learning spaces and the different ways in which knowledge is performed.

With the increased focus on digitization in relation to learning and education today, among the topics we identify as important to further investigate is the use of digital media in teaching processes and digital practices within the field of visual arts and sloyd education.

PhD Narrative Processes
The department of Fine Art at Konstfack is committed to supporting artistic research which seeks to make an original contribution to existing knowledge and scholarship. We are looking particularly for candidates who have a socially engaged practice in the field of contemporary art.

The PhD in Narrative Processes invites proposals which conduct practice-based research related to the various functions of storytelling and narrativity. As a field of study, Narrative Processes incorporates practice-based research on the role of narrativity in visual art in the broadest sense: from film, photography, and the expanded field of painting, to text, performance and live art. The field investigates intersections between the image and language, and the visual story’s relationships with time, space, voice and body.

The investigation of the meaning-making functions of narratives, their strategies, ethics and political content, and not least their possibilities of establishing structures for social co-existence, is fundamental to this area of research.

PhD Critical Sound Practice
The department of Fine Art at Konstfack is committed to supporting artistic research which seeks to make an original contribution to existing knowledge and scholarship.

We are looking particularly for candidates who have a socially engaged practice in the field of contemporary art, centred upon the use of sound and sonic media.

The research proposal should engage with the socio-political dimension of sound and the sonic environment, and could be connected to questions regarding the narrative potentialities of sound, sound as a critical device, sonic architecture, field recording, experimental composition, or sound as a means through which to construct meaning and experience. Applicants are required to possess an advanced creative practice within which the use, interrogation or appropriation of sound plays a central—but not necessarily exclusive—part, and who have the necessary technical, theoretical and analytical foundtions to undertake an extended body of practice-based research

The workplace
As a doctoral student in the programme Art, Technology and Design, you will be given the opportunity to work in a growing research and educational environment at two leading Swedish seats of learning: Konstfack and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). Study in the context of the programme takes place at both educational institutions, though the advertised positions are at Konstfack.

Konstfack is Sweden’s biggest artistic university, with 200 employees and close to 900 students at first- and second-cycle levels. The university conducts research in its various fields of study. Konstfack’s exhibition premises, specialised material workshops and library specialising in art, handicraft and design are all high-quality resources that are unique in Sweden. As a doctoral student at Konstfack, you will be expected to attend the university and to be involved in daily activities.

The position starts on 1 January 2019, with the first courses following immediately thereafter.

Tasks
The research programme as part of the Art, Technology and Design programme is interdisciplinary by virtue of its specialisation in the meeting between perspectives and specific materialisation. As a doctoral student, you will formulate a research project which you will pursue in parallel with studies in the form of courses, seminars and workshops. The research project is based on a critically analytical approach that is applied in material, formative and performative research. The programme offers substantial opportunities for collaboration with researchers and doctoral students in related areas of knowledge and environments. We would like to see part of the research programme conducted at institutions and research centres abroad in order to expand the innovative, critical and global perspectives in your work.

Qualifications
Applicants should have an educational background specialising in the arts, for example a master’s degree in design, handicraft, art or visual arts and sloyd education. Applicants should be accustomed to working both independently and in groups, and the ability to express themselves freely in written and spoken English is a core requirement. Knowledge of Swedish is not necessary, though it would be an advantage in being awarded access to the programme. Experience of knowledge organisations or socially orientated organisations is desirable. Applicants must be strongly motivated to conduct research studies, have a strong creative driving force and a capacity for critical analysis.

In order to be accepted onto the research programme, applicants must have gained a qualification at second-cycle level or satisfied course requirements of at least 240 HE credits, of which at least 60 credits must be at second-cycle level within a relevant disciplinary domain. Applicants who do not satisfy the general entry requirements can refer to so-called validation of prior learning, i.e. an assessment of knowledge, skills and abilities acquired in the course of work, education or other activity. A request for validation of prior learning should be submitted as a special attachment and include cited certificates and work samples.

Employment status
Employment status: Temporary appointment
Hours: Full time 100%
Salary: According to the University of Arts, Crafts and Design’s agreement for doctoral student pay
Starting: 01-01-2019
Employment status: Temporary appointment according to the regulations on doctoral appointments in the Higher Education Ordinance (approx. 4 years of full-time study).
Number of positions: 4

Information
Professor Bo Westerlund, bo.westerlund@konstfack.se
Magnus Mörck, director of the Education and Research Administration Division, magnus.morck@konstfack.se

Application deadline: August 23, 2018