Research strategy
Drama research at Kingston is relatively new. It falls within the School of Performance and Screen Studies (established in 2005), which is part of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The postgraduate profile of drama is also rooted in practice, and forms part of a lively performance culture at Kingston. Two drama PhD bursaries are being offered for 2010/11 in order to help build a stronger postgraduate culture within the School alongside postdoctoral work in music and film. There is a programme of weekly research seminars/workshops, which involves visiting researchers, staff and postgraduate students.
Drama's research strategy is to sustain, extend and build on current levels of achievement in order to create a vigorous research culture as a framework supporting research active staff and postgraduates. In particular, priority will be given to:
- raising the quality of research outputs
- prioritizing sabbatical leave entitlement and other forms of support to allow staff to initiate, develop and complete their research plans
- creating a collaborative performance research centre based at the Rose Theatre that combines academic and non-academic research locally, nationally and internationally
- strengthening practice-based research alongside conventional research
- expanding the research seminar/workshop programme
- raising the research profile of drama
- treating research record and potential as key criteria in recruitment
- extending postgraduate offer and connecting it to research imperatives
- introducing more research students and developing research supervisors
- improving mentoring of staff in research activities (in relation to the direction and monitoring of research for early career and newer researchers, managing the process of funding applications and placing research findings in the public domain)
- strengthening inter-disciplinary research
- sustaining a vigorous research environment that will enhance and support individual research as well as offer greater collaborative possibilities
- extending links with the industry (both as collaborators in generating new insights and as users of those insights)
