8.1.3Flemish PhDs in the arts since 2006

By the end of 2024, 224 artistic PhD projects had been successfully defended in Flanders, and all the School of Arts now have at least a dozen finished doctoral trajectories to their name. Still, the consolidation of arts-based inquiry in the form of awarded doctorates has differed across institutions. The KUL and UAntwerpen associations dominated the scene, awarding 11 of the 15 PhDs in the arts successfully completed between 2006 and 2011. By 2012, what had been a small trickle of projects gained momentum and hit a steady stride of over 20 degrees awarded per year in 2019, with a noticeable dip in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by an immediate rebound to pre-pandemic levels in 2021 and thereafter (see Figure 3).

With 64 (5 joint) and 63 defended doctorates in the arts, the KUL and UAntwerpen associations have remained at the forefront of artistic research in Flanders, graduating a little more than half of all art PhDs since 2006.^[1] Combined, the VUB and UGent associations amount to 36,6% and UHasselt 8,4%; joint PhDs (most of which involve UHasselt/PXL-MAD) amount to 4.4% of the total. These numbers show that the distribution of PhDs in the arts across Flemish university associations does not reflect their relative size: the University of Antwerp (roughly 23,000 students) is smaller than the KUL (roughly 58,000 students) and the University of Ghent (roughly 49,000 students).

The PhDs in the arts awarded in Flanders can be grouped under six broad categories: Music, Visual Arts (which includes Painting, Photography, Sculpture, etc.), Design (Graphic, Jewelry, etc.), Audiovisual Arts (notably Film and Sound), Performing Arts (Dance and Theater), and Miscellaneous, which includes a handful of arts PhDs that do not sit comfortably in the other categories: Computer Coding (2), Literary Composition (3), and Arts and Law (1).

^[1] _{6 of the 19 art PhDs awarded by the UHasselt association have been joint: 5 in collaboration with KUL, and 1 with the VUB.}

As the Figure 4 above shows, music stands out as the most prominent discipline in artistic research in Flanders, accounting for a bit more than a third of all PhDs in the arts since 2006 (81, or 36,1% of the total). A possible reason for this prominence may be the ‘academic’ tradition that existed in the conservatories and other institutions for tertiary arts education well before the academiseringsproces got under way. In contrast to their counterparts in the visual arts, these institutions and their staff have always been at least peripherally involved in scholarly fields like musicology and music historiography. This, in turn, offers a probable explanation for the strong historical interest found in many doctoral projects in music. Design disciplines, for their part, tend to be less well represented in Flemish PhDs in the arts, with Craft Design (7, or 3,1%), Product Design (2%), and Graphic Design (8, or 3,6%) accounting for a minimal portion of the total (see Table 1, below).^[2] This is supposedly attributable to the fact that design disciplines had traditionally been situated on the professional end of higher arts education. The historical focus of these design disciplines on practical solutions and outcomes, combined with their emphasis on craftsmanship, has ostensibly made the introduction of investigative practices less self-evident. But their gradual increase over recent years does demonstrate how artistic disciplines centered on design are developing productive modes of engaging with research activities.

Having looked at the arts PhDs awarded by broad categories, we should look also at their breakdown by specific practices. This is not difficult to do for most broad categories, such as Music and Design, but it can be more challenging in the Visual Arts, since many artists do not work within one medium, like painting or sculpture, but across a number of them. We have labelled these instances as “Mixed Media” in Table 1.

^[2] _{Only one PhD has been awarded in Fashion Design, in 2015.}

This preceding Table allows us not only to have a more granular picture of the range of media involved in artistic research in Flanders thus far, but it also shows that the KUL and UAntwerpen associations boast the highest disciplinary variety in the doctorates they have awarded. The reasons for this are most likely different: in the case of the KUL, it stems no doubt from its dominant position in higher education in Flanders; in the case of the UAntwerpen association, the disciplinary variety can be attributed, presumably, to the fact that it includes three distinct institutions for higher arts education, each of which had a well-developed and distinct artistic identity vis-à-vis the other two prior to their formal association with UAntwerpen.

The Universitaire Associatie Brussel stands out as the association with the lowest disciplinary variety: it has awarded doctoral titles in Audiovisual Arts (Film and Sound), Drama, and Music (see Figure 4; Table 1). This, of course, reflects the specializations of the Schools of Arts included in the association, with one institution devoted to music (the KCB), and another to theater, cinema, and sound (the RITCS). Similarly, the existence of PhDs focused on Craft Design is brought by the specific artistic expertise already present at the School of Arts itself, for example at PXL-MAD (see Figure 4). Insofar as artistic research in Flanders involves both universities and Schools of Arts, the PhD trajectories that have been finalized until this point indicate that their substance depends mostly on the latter category of institutions.