PhD in the Arts

The PhD in the Arts at the Mozarteum University Salzburg is looking for art practitioners to launch a new doctoral programme in artistic research. Artists from any field of practice are encouraged to apply, including but not limited to music, the visual arts, theatre, dance, film, digital media, and design. The doctoral programme focuses on the potential of artistic processes to articulate themselves as research, as well as on the capability of these processes for creative and critical reflection, whereby artistic practice becomes both the subject matter of the research trajectory and the method through which research is conducted.

The PhD in the Arts provides a framework for the development of individual projects, with a wide spectrum of formats ranging from one-to-one tuition, seminars, workshops, lectures, excursions and an open space dedicated to the self-organisation of candidates. The doctoral curriculum takes place in a collaborative research environment that fosters artistic and intellectual exchange and cooperation and offers appropriate infrastructure and facilities (spaces, instruments, staff, library, etc.).

The programme is designed for a minimum of three years and conducted in English. All courses will take place in monthly gatherings. Residence in Austria is not required, but participants are requested to take part in activities in Salzburg.

The programme works with the concept of transversality as an operative principle that opposes both a vertical and a horizontal understanding of art. Examples of transversal practices that the programme welcomes include but are not limited to:
–Practices that engage post-anthropocentric modes of creativity (e.g. reflections on human and other-than-human interaction, environmental awareness, historical and new materialisms, speculative realism, post-human discourses, etc.).
–Practices that develop divergent and creative approaches to history and cultural heritage (e.g. archival practices, reflections of temporal linearity and anachronism, experimental modes of music performance, montages of found footage etc.).
–Practices that challenge hierarchical social and political structures (e.g. centered on feminist, queer, Marxist, decolonial and postcolonial discourses, etc.), as well as traditional divisions of labor in the art market (composer/performer/improviser, artist/spectator, art/society, etc.).
–Practices that engage with the imaginary and spiritual not as marginal nonrealities, but as means to change epistemologies and to reinvent ontologies.

Applicants are admitted to the doctoral programme through a two-step selection process (application and interview). The application compiled into a single PDF file no larger than 5 MB) has to be uploaded online here and should include the following:
–a résumé (curriculum vitae),
–a portfolio containing relevant activities (exhibitions, concerts, compositions, publications, conferences, etc.), including links to audio and video files and large images where relevant,
–a written proposal outlining the artistic research project to be developed during the course of the study programme (contextualization of artistic research practice, potential questions of the project, outline of a prospective trajectory and provisional timetable for the project, optional: proposals for potential supervisors). The PhD project proposal should consist of two to ten A4 pages.

All materials must be in English.

The application tool is open from April 25 to May 16, 2022. The results of the application process will be communicated to applicants at the beginning of June, 2022. Selected candidates will be invited for an interview between June 20 and June 22, 2022.

You can download the curriculum and the guidelines on the homepage of the Mozarteum University Salzburg.

For information on the application process, please contact: studieninfo [​at​] moz.ac.at