PreDoc Research in the Arts

Have you ever thought about doing a doctorate in the arts? Or are you interested in research-based approaches in artistic practice, e.g. as part of art-science programs or research residencies?  

Various doctoral programs, also in cooperation with the HKB, give art school graduates access to a doctorate. In addition, there are more and more opportunities to conduct artistic research outside of universities or to work in transdisciplinary collaborations between art and science.    

The PreDoc program provides an overview of the diverse methodological approaches, discourses and contexts of research in the arts with a specific focus on the doctorate as an emerging field in Switzerland. Participants will gain a practice- and project-oriented insight into various doctoral programs, their requirements and specifics, as well as different research contexts and networks in Switzerland and internationally. It offers orientation in the search for suitable partner universities, doctoral supervisors/mentors, collaborations and funding opportunities. Participants receive individual support in developing their own research ideas. This can serve as the basis for developing a doctoral exposé or research proposal.  

On successful completion of the course, you will acquire the following skills: 

• You will be able to formulate an exposé for an artistic research idea that can be entered into an artistic or scientific doctoral program or implemented for further work in artistic practice 

• You can present a research concept in a comprehensible way and communicate it to different target groups in a suitable format    

• You will be able to formulate a research question for an artistic research project and derive hypotheses   

• You have knowledge of the state of the art in the respective field and the ability to relate this to your own research project  

• You have peer group competence: Be able to put forward their own point of view in a peer group with well-founded arguments and engage with the viewpoints of others; recognize themes and attitudes in the material and review their own stance   

• You are able to research and analyze relevant texts in the respective field of research and critically examine them in their own work    

• You are able to develop research designs for the artistic-scientific research project (problem, research question, objective, theoretical references, suitable methodology, approach, incl. timetable) 

Yvonne Schmidt (she /her), is a professor, founder and head of the transdisciplinary EcoArtLab and responsible for the research field of art education at the Institute Practices and Theories in the Arts at the Bern Academy of the Arts HKB /BFH. Currently she is Principal Investigator of the research projects “Aesthetics of the Im/Mobile” (2022-2026) and “EcoArtLab. Relational Encounters between the Arts and Climate Research” (2023-2027), both funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She is co-president of the Swiss Society for Theatre Research and founder of the “Performance & Disability” network of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR). In this context, she has curated encounters between scholars and artists in Asia, Europe, and South America for a decade. Before she joined HKB, she was a Lecturer and Deputy Head of the Institute for the Performing Arts and Film (IPF) at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), where she initiated and led various research projects and established the international PreDoc program PEERS for emerging artistic researchers as well as the PhD program at the department of performing arts and film. She studied theatre and dance studies and literature in Bern, Paris, and Mainz. During and after her PhD in Theatre Studies at the University of Bern (2008-2013), she was a research fellow at the University of Illinois and a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (2018-2019). Yvonne has worked for different performance festivals, and created formats that foster a dialogue between arts, sciences, and society. She teaches and researches on artistic research, transdisciplinarity, performance and disability, art (mediation) and climate change, curating as political practice and the (digital) transformation of cultural institutions. 

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