Nebula 7.1/7.2, June 2010 Brabazon and Dagli: ...Quality Scholarship Through Creativity 23 Putting the Doctorate into Practice, and the Practice into Doctorates: Creating a New Space for Quality Scholarship Through Creativity By Tara Brabazon and Zeynep Dagli 1 There is much debate in an environment of Quality Assurance, vocationalism and research impact about the diverse modes of doctoral education. Traditional models, methods and protocols have been challenged, transformed and shaped by professional and practice-based candidatures. Yet the key problem and issue is often unspoken: can the international academic community create a culture of equivalence between the diverse doctoral forms? How are the very specific regulations for PhD by prior publication aligned in standard and quality with professional doctorates that often involve coursework? Similarly, how are newer modes of credentialing aligned with the ideologies of artistic quality that often infuse practice-based doctorates? How do the diverse doctoral forms effect the enrolment and examination of the “traditional” thesis? When discussing the specific challenges of practice-based research in the portfolio of doctorates, a Times Higher Education article conveyed concerns with existing academic protocols. Practice-based PhDs, where doctorates are awarded for “non-textual” submissions such as a work of art, are becoming more common. Yet researchers in the creative fields still lack a “properly developed language” to describe what they are doing. 2 To create, discuss and apply this language, a conference was held at Northumbria University bearing the title “All Maps Welcome: doctoral research beyond reading and writing.” The goal was to investigate “non-textual” forms of communication in scholarly processes. Unaddressed in such a title was whether doctoral education should welcome „all maps‟ and indeed if there are consequences when decentring „reading and writing.‟ Our paper acknowledges these difficult questions, enabling a language to explore the pathways, benefits and difficulties emerging through practice-based doctorates. The writers of this paper were a research team of supervisor and student. A film-based doctorate was submitted by Zeynep Dagli 1 Dr Dagli and Professor Brabazon wish to dedicate this article to the memory of Zeynep‟s father who lived to see her pass her doctoral degree, but not long enough to witness her graduation. 2 Z. Corbyn, “Creative researchers urged to find words to sum up their own art words,” Times Higher Education, March 27- April 2, 2008, p. 8