Cultural practices are significant and rapidly expanding generators of new knowledge across a range of disciplines. However, many of the academic research and cultural projects currently funded are based on the case-study model and on social sciences methodologies. Such approaches situate cultural practitioners and their activities as the object of research, and not as actively informing the research itself.

This seminar will use as starting points the model of British academia and the presenter’s own experience as a practicing artist to map the challenges and opportunities for collaborative research between the two sectors.

The increasing international appetite for interdisciplinary collaborations provides fertile ground for shifting knowledge paradigms and encouraging new modalities of cultural practice as research. Thanks to its rich history and evolving present of intercultural practices, Australia is uniquely positioned to contribute to this discourse.

This seminar will contextualise collaborative research methodologies that have the potential to de-universalise, de-neutralise and de-colonise the mechanisms of knowledge production in higher education, the cultural sector, and beyond.

Presenter Dr Bill Balaskas, Associate Professor & Director of Research, Business and Innovation, School of Arts; Director of the Centre for Practice Research in the Arts; Kingston University, London.