Doctorate in the Arts
About the Doctorate in the Arts
By enabling and stimulating doctoral research, LUCA School of Arts attracts competent and enthused artists and designers who help to develop and strengthen high-level research and education in LUCA’s core areas of study: music and drama, audiovisual arts, visual arts and design. LUCA collaborates with the University of Leuven for its doctoral programme in the arts. Our PhD students are enrolled at KU Leuven, which officially awards the degree of PhD, but have one or more supervisors from the research units of LUCA. As stipulated in the doctoral regulation, the PhD in the Arts consists of a thesis as well as (a) creation(s) in arts or design. Both parts are considered equal and as a unity. Together they show evidence of the ability to create new knowledge. The thesis and the presentation of the creations in arts or design must allow the examination committee to assess the quality of the doctoral research. There are no general rules regarding the form and content except of the quality requirements.
Doctoral students in the domain of music may follow the doctoral programme of the Orpheus Institute. More information about this docARTES programme can be found on this website.
Doctoral committee
The members of the doctoral committee in the Arts are: Leen Engelen, Lut Pil, Jeroen D’hoe, Steven Devleminck, Jos De Backer, Bart Geerts, Anneleen Masschelein, Rolf Hughes, Eva Cardon (PhD student) and Veerle Van der Sluys (chairman).
contact: research@luca-arts.be
Application procedure
The deadline for submitting new PhD applications is May 17 2021.
Eligible candidates will be invited to discuss their project at the next meeting of the doctoral committee in the arts on June 9 2021.
The deadline for submissions after May 17 will be announced soon.
Interested in doing a doctorate in the arts at LUCA Faculty of the Arts? The first step is that you need to find a supervisor from LUCA School of Arts who is willing to support your research project. You must have contacted your future supervisor before you can start applying for admission (see list of possible supervisors below). Please contact your supervisor at least a few weeks before the deadline.
Once you have found a supervisor, please follow this procedure to gain admission to enroll as a doctoral student:
STEP 1 - STARTING UP THE ONLINE REQUEST
- The supervisor fills out this online form: https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/personeel/onderzoek/doctoraat/aanvraag-tot-doctoreren-kunsten
- You then receive an invitation to fill out additional information and upload certain documents in the online application tool
- A scan of your master's degree(s)
- A research proposal using the template below
- A letter of advice of the head of your research unit
- Your CV
- Your portfolio (if relevant)
The uploaded documents must be in pdf format (max. 20MB). Please use links in your portfolio to refer to larger files (eg. videos).
- The supervisor then receives an invitation to give their academic approval or disapproval in the online application tool.
- The next step depends on your nationality (EER/non-EER) and master's degree (Flemish/non-Flemish) (see step 2).
STEP 2 - CANDIDATES WITH AN EER-NATIONALITY AND A FLEMISH MASTER DEGREE
- The supervisor's academic advice (approval/disapproval) is sent to the Faculty's doctoral administration.
- The doctoral committee of LUCA School of Arts evaluates the proposal and invites you to the next meeting of the doctoral committee to discuss the research project.
- If the application is approved by the doctoral committee, you will be invited to enroll as a doctoral student at KU Leuven.
STEP 2 - CANDIDATES WITH A NON-EER-NATIONALITY AND/OR WITHOUT A FLEMISH MASTER DEGREE
- All information and uploaded documents from the online application tool are sent to International Admissions.
- International Admissions prepares an advice about the quality of your track record (diplomas, grades).
- This advice and the supervisor's academic advice is sent to the Faculty's doctoral administration.
- The doctoral committee of LUCA School of Arts evaluates the proposal and invites you to the next meeting of the doctoral committee to discuss the research project.
- If the application is approved by the doctoral committee, you will be invited to enroll as a doctoral student at KU Leuven.
If you have any questions regarding the application procedure please contact research@luca-arts.be.
Please note that an acceptance as a PhD student in the Arts at LUCA/KU Leuven does not entail funding.
The regulation for the PhD in the Arts can be found here.
Doctoral programme
LUCA - Faculteit Kunsten organiseert geregeld onderzoeksseminaries voor onderzoekers, doctorandi en kandidaten voor het doctoraat. Ook onderzoekers van andere faculteiten en disciplines kunnen deelnemen aan het programma om kennis te maken met onder meer methoden en aanpakvormen uit het onderzoek in de kunsten. Elke onderzoekseenheid van LUCA - Faculteit Kunsten is verantwoordelijk voor de organisatie van één seminarie, workshop of summer school. Bovendien wordt er een seminarie in samenwerking met de Faculteit Architectuur georganiseerd. U kan een attest tot deelname aan een seminarie opvragen bij monia.kennes@luca-arts.be.
Seminar - vrijdag 02/10/2020 - Met presentaties van Matthijs De Bruijne, Post Collective, Magdalena Kwiatkowska, Reinaart Vanhoe en een performance van Stijn Van Dorpe met Avsin Azak en Bas Schevers. 14u-18u (gesprekken) 20u performance. Aanspreekpunt: stijn.vandorpe@luca-arts.be
Symposium 'Perform Philosophy' vrijdag - 9/10/2020 - 14h - 18h. Aanspreekpunt: Volkmar.muhleis@luca-arts.be
14 - 15 uur: korte begroeting door Volkmar Mühleis als moderator van het symposium. Esther en haar studenten tonen video's rond performance en filosofie.
15 - 16 uur: 1. een video van Swantje Lichtenstein (Duitsland) betreffend 'Performance Philosophy', interview erna;
2. video rond 'Performance Philosophy',
16 - 16.15: korte pauze
16.15 - 17 uur: presentatie van The Routledge Companion of Performance Philosophy door Laura Cull (Engeland) en Alice Lagaay (Duitsland)
17 - 18 uur: gesprek met Esther, Swantje, Annelies, Laura, Alice, de studenten en het publiek over de presentaties, performance en filosofie
Lezing Maurizio Ferraris woensdag 25/11/2020 - binnen het lezingenprogramma "Object-centred research. On things and thinking." Aanspreekpunt: frank.maet@luca-arts.be
Naast deze seminaries kunnen doctorandi bovendien gebruik maken van het aanbod van de Doctoral School for the Humanities & Social Sciences. Meer info hierover vind je hier: http://ghum.kuleuven.be/phd
Alle doctorandi waarvan de doctorale periode van start ging tijdens of na het academiejaar 2014-2015 zijn verplicht om ook het opleidingsonderdeel ‘Scientific integrity for starting PhDs’ tijdens het eerste jaar van de doctoraatsopleiding te volgen. Inschrijven kan via: https://www.kuleuven.be/english/research/integrity/training/phdlecture.
Supervisors
De promotor van een doctoraat in de kunsten is docent aan LUCA School of Arts en heeft ofwel het statuut “bijzonder gastdocent in de kunsten” ofwel een ZAP-statuut aan de KU Leuven. Docenten van LUCA zonder dit statuut kunnen steeds copromotor zijn van een doctoraat in de kunsten. Hieronder vindt u een lijst van de mogelijke promotoren voor een doctoraat in de kunsten aan LUCA School of Arts.
- Research topics: Eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth century music, Technologically Inspired Performance (TIP), Historically Informed Performance (HIP), Beethoven’s rhetoric, pianism, and pianos
- Research unit: Music & Drama
- Research topics:
clinical improvisation
music therapeutic processes
psychiatry - Research unit: Music & Drama
- Research topics:
professional development of music educators
processes of educational innovation in music education
practitioner research in music education
musical communication - Research unit: Music & Drama
- PhD in Art Sciences
- Research topics: photography, theory of photography, contemporary art, conceptual art, art in Belgium, humor
- Research unit: Intermedia
- Research topics:
art history
aesthetics
political theory
painting
drama
hermeneutics
classical culture - Research unit: Image
- PhD in the Arts
- Research topics: digital media and art, cartography, artistic mapping, information design
- Research unit: Intermedia
- Research topics:
musical composition
interdisciplinary research and creations
integration of artistic practice, research and education
interaction of musical analysis and performance practice
musicology
pop music - Research unit: Music & Drama
- Research topics:
visual media: stereoscopy, lantern projections, postcards, panorama paintings, film
history of film
media history
cultural heritage
audio-visual heritage
First World War
archive
historical and media archaeological approaches
ephemeral arts
memory and remembrance - Research unit: Inter-Actions
- PhD in the Arts
- Research topics: contemporary painting, medium specificity, spatiality, (re)presentation models, artists’ archive, rhetorics of artistic research
- Research unit: Image
- Research topics: Participatory design and Codesign, Inclusive design, Design for health, Design for people with neurocognitive disorders, dementia or Alzheimer, Design for disability and Systemic design approaches
- Research unit: Inter-Actions
- Research topics:
design of meaningful game and interaction rules
relationship between image and music in audiovisual media
creation of digital and virtual environments - Research unit: Inter-Actions
- Research topics:
regenerative aesthetics
haptic aesthetics
reverse perspective
responsive and transformative phenomenology
phenomenology of pop culture - Research unit: Image
- Research topics:
technology and/as art
technology and ethics
art and science
art and other media
post-artistic theory
philosophy of artistic research
philosophy in relation to the practice of art and design
philosophy of contemporary culture - Research unit: Image
- PhD in the Arts
- Research topics: animation, constructions of Whiteness, letters in contemporary art writing, walking in artistic practice, marginalized histories, broken world botany and migration histories
- Research unit: Intermedia
- PhD in the Arts
- Research topics: practice of fine art and experimental film, intermediality, word-image-interaction, poetry film, (auto)fiction
- Research unit: Image
- Research topics:
contemporary art
design
textile
clay and ceramics
glass
art of the 19th century - Research unit: Image
- PhD in History of Architecture and Art Sciences
- Research topics: contemporary art, visual culture and media studies, with a focus on iconoclasm in contemporary culture
- Research unit: Intermedia
- Research topics:
composition
orchestration
piano
analysis - Research unit: Music & Drama
- Research topics:
interplay design and science/technology
network visualisation
playful design
interaction design - Research unit: Inter-Actions
- Research topics:
historically informed performance practice
carillon
mechanical music instruments
versteek-books
intavolation - Research unit: Music & Drama
- Research topics:
cinema and the visual arts, painting, experimental film,
slow cinema, essay film, artistic authorship, genre,
the ordinary, narrative, myth, fiction, writing, script
criticism, ethics / aesthetics, word / image, imagination / reflection - Research unit: Image
- Research topics:
literary studies, art theory, interpretation studies, phenomenology, aesthetics, ethics, writing, reading, the essay, poetics, criticism, word-image-interaction, verbal reflexivity, the artistic process, attention and affect studies, fascination, intuition, illusion, metamorphosis, epiphany, the imaginary, corporeality, romanticism, self-evidence, (auto)fiction, shared reality. - Research unit: Image
- PhD in Communication Studies
- Research topics: cinema, media history, film & television studies, cultural heritage, arts in wartime
- Research unit: Intermedia
- Research Topics:
art-education, pedagogy of arts, pedagogy of the camera, pedagogy of the digital screen, pedagogy of the art-school/art-studio), pedagogy of childhood, speculative science, cabinets of curiosity, the art of noticing, equality, affection, exposure and attention - Research unit: Image
- Research topics:
Audio topography
Spatial experiences: visual, auditory, sensorimotor, tactile and conceptual
Spatial narrativity - Research unit: Image