Arts Research

Overview

The mission of the Arts Research office is to cultivate the creation of new knowledge through scholarship and practice in the arts by supporting faculty, staff, and students in their areas of expertise and expanding the impact of their work through collaborative projects.

We integrate arts research into the U of A research mission and enterprise through capacity-building within the college and through collaborations with research institutes and centers, extension units, and colleges across campus. Within this context, the innovative work of our faculty, staff, and students has dramatically expanded the role of the arts in the university’s research ecosystem, particularly in relation to arts research that engages community partners.

The diverse methods and practices of arts research integrate into a wide range of disciplines (public health, environmental science, anthropology, sociology), generating questions that stimulate new ways of understanding and addressing complex problems. Some key sites of arts integration and collaboration include: Arizona Institute for Resilience, Arizona Center for Astrobiology, Biosphere 2, Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, Office of Societal Impact, Research Leadership Institute, Santa Rita Experimental Range and Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy.

Arts Research

Research is generally understood as a systematic investigation, the purpose of which is to create new propositional knowledge. However, the vast majority of human cognition lies outside of our conscious awareness entirely. This kind of tacit knowledge created in and through the arts plays a major role in how we make sense of our experience and ultimately how we choose to live.

Arts research creates knowledge using three distinct methods:

1. Humanistic methods (art history, criticism, theory)
2. Social science methods – formal qualitative and/or quantitative inquiry that uses art processes to understand and articulate aspects of human experience (arts-based research)
3. Processes of creation – when the artifact is the basis of the contribution to knowledge (practice-based research).*

*Understanding this method requires questioning our assumptions about the nature of art and the relationship between research and human knowledge.

For more information, see:

• Research in the Arts: An Emerging Discourse
• Arts Research Integration Network Proposal

Questions