Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Creative and Performing Arts

Undertake a PhD in Creative and Performing Arts

Gain expertise in a specialised area of creativity

Pursue an advanced research project in an area of drama, screen, digital media, or creative writing and engage in innovative creative practices that expand our experience and knowledge of the cultural and social world.

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Why undertake a PhD in Creative and Performing Arts

Gain expertise in a specialised area of creativity and become an international expert in your topic
Make a difference to the world. Your research has the potential to improve people’s lives through a better understanding of individual experience and how creative arts adds value to our society
Explore a fascinating research question that no one has answered before. You will have the opportunity to fill a gap in current knowledge or answer a previously unresolved issue in your field

Discover more about research at the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

Your career

A PhD gained in Creative or Performing Arts at Flinders provides a wide range of skills valued in all types of organisations and careers. It will enhance your creative practice, analytical and communication skills, provide you with skills to quickly learn new concepts and adapt to change, and enhance your time management, organisation and resilience skills.

A PhD is a stepping stone to a career as an artist, a professional researcher in the public sector, think tanks, charities, universities, and private corporations. Individuals with PhDs in creative or performing arts are highly sought after for various professions in public and private organisations and have found roles in writing, the public service, consulting, advising, teaching and publishing.

Potential occupations include:

artist
academic
writer
consultant or advisor
professional researcher.

Potential employers include:

arts organisations
performing and creative arts companies
museums and galleries
publishing companies
media production companies
universities
think tanks
public sector.

Potential research supervisors

Flinders Creative and Performing Arts academic staff include several award-winning writers, and are recognised as leaders in their fields both in Australia and globally for their theoretical and practice-led research. Our academic supervisors draw on their extensive knowledge and exciting research in the areas of creative writing, theatre production, drama and screen critical studies.

Dr Ali Gumillya Baker	Indigenous art theory and criticism, Indigenous histories and colonialism, memory, visual sovereignty, visual and performance art, cultural studies
Dr Lisa Bennett	Novel writing, fiction writing, speculative fiction, contemporary Australian genre fiction, myths and mythology, and Vikings in history, literature and popular culture
Associate Professor Julia Erhart	Women screen practitioners, LGBTQ+ self-representation, documentary and factual media (including documentary duration and the documentary ‘event’), cinema memory and the archive, Australian media, media ethics
Dr Nicholas Godfrey	Hollywood cinema, film aesthetics, film distribution, Australian cinema, Asian cinema
Dr Natalie Harkin	Decolonising state archives, and engaging archival-poetic methods to research and document Aboriginal women’s domestic service stories and labour histories in South Australia.
Dr Sean Williams	Speculative fiction in short and long forms
Dr Amy Matthews	Fiction writing (novels and short stories), genre fiction, historical fiction, holocaust representation, popular romance studies, film and television, literary theory
Dr Sarah Peters	Verbatim theatre, collaborative theatre making, playwriting, dramaturgy
Associate Professor Simone Tur	Cultural studies
Dr Alex Vickery-Howe	Political storytelling, intercultural storytelling, myth and fantasy, and emerging audiences.
Dr Tully Barnett	Interdisciplinary research into investigating ways of valuing art and culture beyond econometrics, and digitisation as a cultural practice.