‘Interrogations: Creative Interdisciplinarity in Art and Design Research' is a 2 year Postgraduate Training project organised by De Montfort University Faculty of Art and Design and Loughborough University School of Art and Design (supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council).

It follows on from the 'In Theory' project organized last year, which examined the relationship between theory and practice in art and design research and focused on relevant research methods, theories and approaches.

Interrogations has funding for a number of workshops during 2008 and a 2 day conference on the 1st and 2nd of July 2009 (at Loughborough). The project aims to enable postgraduate research students in art and design to creatively utilise theories, methods, ideas and information from other disciplines and to inventively work with unfamiliar concepts and approaches from a variety of subject areas. Ultimately it aims to promote interdisciplinarity as a way to enhance and encourage creativity.

Issues to be addressed might include:

• Why interdisciplinarity?
• In what ways is interdisciplinarity useful and stimulating for practitioners and other research students.
• The relationship of theory to practice in interdisciplinary research. Opportunities and pitfalls.
• How to locate and digest suitable interdisciplinary theories and concepts without being overwhelmed, or just resorting to "pick and mix strategy".
• "Translating" from one discipline to another. Should you be "true" to your source or is it better to modify the material you take from other disciplines?
• The problem of illustrating (in your practice) ideas from other disciplines, and how to avoid this.
• Isn’t everything interdisciplinary?

 Gen Doy (DMU) and Jane Tormey (Loughborough)

For further information please contact
Nikki Counley N.Counley@lboro.ac.uk
Hema Naran hnaran@dmu.ac.uk