Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications

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Producing the Self: an epistolary reflection of a PhD research journey

Lyon, D (Centre of Visual Arts (CoVA) University of Melbourne and the University of Western Australia, 2021-11-26)

In this letter to research graduates, author Donna Lyon embarks on a reflexive account of her PhD research journey. She explores the methodological challenges of producing a practice-led digital archive research project, for pedagogical, research and engagement purposes. Alongside this, is a reflective discussion on the personal and professional discoveries that she made along the way. The author shifts from the pragmatism of being an effective industry producer to one who introduces broader reflections of her processes and their implications on the practice, enhancing the action-based nature of the exploration. This precipitated a broader reflective practice, combining the authors personal experiences of publicly claiming her experiences as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and how it informed her working methods and relationship to the research and films in the archive. As the films in the archive were transformed from old media into new media, so too was the researcher’s personal and professional identity as she began to express and re-claim self.