John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

Direct contact and negotiation with practitioners and stakeholders through the
curation of the exhibition challenged the researcher to move beyond first
assumptions and improve the likelihood of accurate and reliable findings. A
goal and characteristic of exemplary case studies is that they report data in a
way that transforms a complex issue into one that can be understood. The
‘Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders’ exhibition presented the argument
developed in this thesis in a publicly accessible form that invited alternative
analyses.
There are disadvantages of using the curation of a public exhibition and
symposium as a research method. This method can be criticised in that a study
of a few cases offers no grounds to show reliability or generality for the findings.
There must however be greater impartiality than more conventional forms of
practice-based research since this study benefits by being able to make direct
use of a body of work other than the researcher’s own. Another potential
criticism of this method is that the involvement of the researcher within the
process biases these findings. This research is reflexive it actively contributes to
the field of enquiry. The researcher commissioned new works from
practitioners in response to a brief. Many of the practitioners that took part in
the exhibition can be said to have self-selected themselves by responding to the
open call and have received wider recognition for their work because of this
exhibition. In this way the research has actively contributed to framing a new
context for the exhibition participants and could be interpreted as
demonstrating a self-fulfilling bias. In order to maintain objectivity the
researcher has applied a systematic method of collecting data, analysing
information, and reporting the results to offset his participatory role in the
research. This meant that extensive record-keeping techniques were essential
for this work. The process of maintaining and updating this evidence was timeconsuming
and at times overwhelming. This is a factor that should be taken
into account in future when considering this type of study. Although the
research described in this thesis has limits, it provides a substantial starting
point from which to carry out future work. As a first stage of research in this
area it has mapped out a territory, both theoretical and practicable, within
which subsequent investigations can be conducted.
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