Yr 2 Graduate Research Proposal

What is a proposal?

What it absolutely is not is a contract which you will be held to - it doesn't need to spell out what you will make, or what your final exhibition will look like! It is much more aimed at sharing your current research; showing a plausible direction for the year; and offering some initial ideas about steps (including very practical ones) you might take towards your final project.

Proposal text

• Draft deadline: September 11th (send to MIKE)
• Proposal workshop: October 1st
• Final deadline: October 6th (send to PETRA)

Initially the proposal takes the form of a short text (maximum 1000 words) which is part of your proposal assessment in October, when we discuss your plans for the graduation year.

There is no set form for the proposal text, but it should in some form try to address the following things:

• What is your question or questions? Your zone of interest and inquiry?
• What concrete actions do you plan to take / what research methods do you plan to use to develop your inquiry? What will you do? What will you make? What will you look at? Who will you talk to? What will you read?
• What other practices / bodies of thinking / making will your work be in conversation with?
• How might you approach the written component (your graduation essay)?
• What kind of actual support will you need? Material / technical / time-management and so on.
• A bibliography of possible sources.

We can provide you with examples but there is not a template to follow here - the key is to try to be coherent and convincing, to make a persuasive case for a plausible line of research and making, even if you are only speculating at this point.

Proposal seminar: 10 & 11 October

During the proposal seminar, you will each make a short presentation to expand upon or complement what you have written in the proposal text.

The tutors will have read your proposals, and are expecting you to present a synthesis of your ideas for the graduate research project and thesis. Your presentation can take 20 minutes and the remaining time (total duration 45 minutes) is for questions from the tutors. All of the tutors may ask you questions during the assessments. The precise format for your presentation is up to you, but the general format is similar to all the other assessments.

The proposal assessment is a formative assessment. You receive feedback from your advising tutors, but no grade. If your advising tutors are satisfied, and there are no strong objections from the rest of the tutors, this is equivalent to a ‘green light’ on your project proposal.

Your presentation can involve you departing from your proposal to present work in progress, for example, or work done over the summer, and how that work fits in with overall plans (or not). You could mention concerns, priorities, things you are excited about. You should be able to field questions about whatever you sketched out in your proposal. Questions might be posed about the direction of your work, resources you may need, or skills you may need to develop. Or they may be more conceptual.

Our main suggestion to students is that you do not read your entire proposal out loud. And since not everyone in the room will be familiar with your work, it is crucial that you remember to present in a way that is understandable for someone who doesn’t have the trajectory of your work while at the Piet in mind.

After your presentations the tutors will sit down together and assess your capacity to: 

• Select appropriate topics for advanced research and work.
• Develop and execute a suitable strategy for research and work.
• Reflect critically upon, analyse and evaluate work undertaken and to use the knowledge gained to (re) define the aims and direction of future practice.
• Formulate appropriate objectives, topics, methods and outcomes for your Graduate Research Project and thesis.