How to write a research plan when applying to Theatre Academy’s Doctoral programme
Detailed guidelines for writing a research plan as an applicant to Tutke's Doctoral programme of artistic research in performing arts.
General information about the research plan
The research plan must include as comprehensive a description as possible of the research idea, its context and execution method. The research plan should also include information on the kinds of research elements that the prospective doctoral research will consist of. Research elements are the artistic components and the commentary of the doctoral research, or combinations of these. The research plan must comply with the Finnish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity.
A good research plan is a narrow yet in-depth summary, instead of a broad description of your whole field of study. During the first phase, it is advisable to clearly write how you consider your research to be artistic research, i.e. an explanation of what you are asking through your artistic practice and why, how the various elements of your research answer your research question, what kinds of theoretical or practical frameworks your research has and how you are planning to execute your research in practice. You can also use a budget and a list of references (as separate documents) to describe how you will execute your research.
Collaborative research
In collaborative research, multiple applicants participate in studying the same overall research area from various angles. Each applicant must have a clearly independent role in the whole.
A collaborative research plan cannot require the admission of another applicant. In other words, the collaboration must be planned in a way that makes it possible to carry out the research even if not all applicants are admitted to doctoral studies.
Research elements
The research elements must be defined clearly in the research plan and grounds for their role in the research must be specified. The research plan must also provide information on how the research elements are presented for public examination, what kinds of resources are needed for this and what is the intended schedule for carrying out the research as a whole.
Research elements are the artistic components and the commentary of the doctoral research, or combinations of these. Further information: Curriculum of the Theatre Academy’s doctoral programme 2021–2026.
Length of the research plan
In English, the research plan cannot exceed 3 pages and 1,200 words in length. Punctuation marks and spaces do not affect the word count. In the first phase of the application process, the jury compares the research plans and assesses them in relation to the admissions criteria. Due to the large number of applications, we appreciate a concise form of expression and clarity of the plan. Some of the applicants are selected to advance to the next phase, in which they are asked to expand and elaborate on their research plan in relation to the admissions criteria.
Structure of the plan
- A question that emerges from my personal artistic practice and that I want to study and reasons why it is important.
- Practical methods and tools that I will use when studying this topic.
- Theoretical sources that support the task of answering the question.
- A concise description of the stages and duration of the research being planned.
Use of artificial intelligence and plagiarism detection
If necessary, the originality of the applicant’s research plan may be checked with Turnitin. Plagiarism, i.e. unauthorised borrowing, is a serious violation of the Finnish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. Examples of plagiarism include directly citing another researcher without quotation marks, slightly reformulating a text and presenting it as one’s own writing or presenting a text produced by artificial intelligence as one’s personal output. If there are suspicions that your research plan or some other part of your application has been produced by someone other than you personally, the admissions jury may check the document using a plagiarism detection system.
Software that are called artificial intelligence, such as machine translation software that are based on neural networks (e.g. Google Translate, DeepL) or language models that produce non-fiction text (e.g. ChatGPT), usually do not produce understandable expert text in the field of performing arts. They may also produce material that has been copied from a published study with no references to sources, which is considered plagiarism. We do not recommend using them for compiling a research plan or any other application materials. In any case, you will have to answer questions on your own in the third phase of the application process.