Practice as Research: developing the workplace project

This chapter highlights the potential for live pieces of work, rather than specifically designed research projects, to be used as the basis for the outputs of professionally-oriented doctorates. Drawing on some examples from a transdisciplinary ‘practitioner’ doctorate in an English university, it discusses how work that is designed to result in change or development can, if approached with sufficient methodological consideration, provide an intellectually robust basis for developing new knowledge that not only has application in practice but can also be worthy of academic dissemination. A case is made for what is here termed ‘practice as research’ being regarded as an archetypal model for the practitioner or ‘Type 3’ doctorate.