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Meaningful Artistic Research

HKU University of the Arts and the University of Humanistic Studies are joining forces, in the field of art and science. Their partnership is known as Meaningful Artistic Research (MAR), with meaningful artistic research as the connecting factor.

Meaningful Artistic Research

Meaningful Artistic Research (MAR) is a sustainable collaboration between the HKU University of the Arts and the University of Humanistic Studies (UvH) in the field of art and science. The collaboration makes it possible to do a PhD in artistic research within the Graduate School of the UvH. In addition, MAR engages in educational innovation, fundraising, publications, and organising meetings and conferences. Our goal is to share knowledge and creativity, and grow into a broad and lively platform for researchers, scientists, artists, designers, curators, makers, students, teachers, tutors and people interested in the field.

The heart of MAR is transdisciplinary artistic research. We aim to create as well as interpret, through making and investigating. After all, art produces unique forms of knowledge, which are important for a meaningful, humane society. MAR explores questions such as: What is knowledge and how do we come to this knowledge? What does the encounter between art and humanism bring to our understanding of humanity? How does this encounter contribute to a dignified and meaningful relationship with each other and with the world around us?

Research perspectives

MAR brings together the research perspectives of HKU and UvH. Research at HKU focuses on artistic processes. There is room for experimentation, for practice-based and empirical methodologies, and for a working method in which the researchers themselves, as makers, are part of the research. HKU's ‘guiding lights’ are key: care and well-being, identity and inclusion, circularity and sustainability. At UvH, research focuses on urgent questions in our society, combining philosophy, social science and humanities. The common themes are humanism, meaningful living, and a just and caring society.

Research in, into and through creative processes stimulates new ways of doing and thinking, also in non-artistic domains. At the same time, diverse research approaches provide depth and context to artistic practices and vice versa.

PhD programs

In the context of this partnership, it is possible to obtain a doctorate in artistic research within the Graduate School of the UvH. The creative process is acknowledged as valid research method, and the artistic work is part of the assessment. Currently, there are several doctoral programs.

Marloeke van der Vlugt investigates the importance of the sense of touch. Her doctoral research on touchability in and through art begins with her own artistic practice, in which she seeks a tactile creation process with sculptural, unpredictable materials and techniques. She then shares the resulting artefacts with audiences in interactive performances. At a time when touch is often associated with risk and taboo, Marloeke looks for ways to activate tactile sensations.

Simona Kicurovska explores how digital automation technologies, such as algorithms and AI, are transforming the field of graphic design. She questions what designers can do and what cannot be programmed into digital design systems. Her research focuses on "designer ways of knowing" that contribute to socially responsible engagement in times of automated, algorithmic design.

Marielle Schuurman researches Co-creative Artistic Research Ecologies, which are part of the Creating Cultures of Care program. In CARE labs, artists and designers work together with residents, clients, professionals, policy makers, students and researchers, regarding questions such as “what does it mean to live with dementia?” or “what can music mean for nurses, patients and their loved ones, after major surgery?" These artistic practices concern a lot, not only on an individual level, but also in their relationships, for everyone involved. How do new concepts and practices of care and art emerge here?

Projects and publications

An overview of several related projects and publications:
The Aesthetics of Touch

Involved employees

  • Works at HKU as a professor, researcher and lecturer. He writes for theatre and radio. His radio plays have been broadcast in 12 countries. As a theatre writer, he specialises in direct collaboration with other theatre disciplines. Nirav Christophe is a writer, dramaturge, process consultant, expert in Dutch and internationally renowned teacher and educator of writing. He specialises in the pedagogy of writing for theatre and is an expert in the field of creativity processes, particularly creative processes for theatre. In this field, he is an authority on co-creation and on conducting practice-based research.

    Click here for more information about Nirav.
  • Works at HKU as a professor, researcher and lecturer. He studied Economics & Business at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and obtained an MBA from Western Illinois University. Since 2010, he has been concentrating on research into the role of entrepreneurship and business models in creative and cultural organisations. This has resulted in various publications on this subject, including the book “Creative Jumpers: Businessmodellen van groeiondernemingen in creatieve industrieën”, published in 2012. In 2020, he obtained a PhD in applied economic sciences from Antwerp University with a doctoral thesis entitled: “Balancing the creative business model”. Walter lectures on the themes of entrepreneurship, business models and innovation management at various institutes in the Netherlands and Belgium.

    Click here for more information about Walter.
  • Veerle is associate lecturer (senior researcher) at HKU within the research domain Creative Practices and Entrepreneurship, where art and its societal value(s) are researched. Additionally, she teaches classes one day per week for Bachelor Design for Change and Innovation. She is one of the coordinators and developers of the Minor Creative Research for Change. She also teaches research skills and technical philosophy, coaches creative research and guides graduate students.

    Click here for more information about Veerle.
  • Marloeke is both artist and HKU teacher, and one of the first PhD candidates within the MAR programme. Her PhD research ‘The Aesthetics of Touch’ is therefore an artistic research PhD’: a thesis track in which HKU partnered with the University of Humanistic Studies to allow for PhD researchers from, and with, an arts university. Marloeke studies the importance of tactile senses. In a time in which touch is often associated with risks and taboo, she is instead searching for ways to stimulate tactile experiences.

    Click here for more information.
  • Simona is designer and HKU teacher, and one of the first PhD candidates within the MAR programme. She investigates how digital automation technologies (algorhythms and AI) are transforming the field of graphical design. She questions which contributions of designers are impossible to program by digital design systems. Her PhD research is focused on ‘designerly ways of knowing': means of contributing to socially responsible (or: response-able) engagement in times of automated algorithmic design.

    Click here for more information.
  • Her work focuses on moral creativity in a caring society. Her approach to care, morality and creativity is not instrumental - a means to an end - but a way of being that is central to our humanity. Care is difficult to grasp, but we all know its presence or absence. Merel works from the thought that attentiveness to what dwells outside our conceptions and maybe even language, can offer us another approach to the challenges we face in the humanities, our institutions and society. She works with artistic modes of inquiry to understand moral dimensions of care and to develop 'care imaginaries'. Her work is a fusion of language, drawing, painting and installation. It results in conversations, (scholarly) publications, talks, workshops, projects and exhibitions.

    Click here for more info about Merel.
  • Louis is working at UvH since September 2023 as principal teacher in Healthcare Ethics and Art. Louis is a transdisciplinary scientist with a track record in developing research and education at the intersection between contemporary art and critical theory about social and planetary justice. Louis combines a classical background in the humanities with a specialisation in today’s gender and diversity studies. Previously, Louis worked as university teacher in Gender Studies at the Literature & Art department at the Cultural and Social Sciences of Maastricht University. As researcher, Louis is studying the socio-political and ethical value of contemporary performance art from feminist, queer-ecological and decolonial perspectives. In the ongoing book project Radical Worlding: Performance and the Ethics of Decreation", Louis puts these perspectives into dialogue with the philosophical, mystical and healthcare-ethical thought of Simone Weil.

    Read more about Louis
  • Is linked to the Team Research Development and Enhancement of HKU. Judith’s work includes, among others, subsidy consultation and research policy for practice-based research in the arts, including the third-cycle research (i.e. the PhD and the hbo pilot of the Professional Doctorate, or PD). She is also involved in coordinating the partnership between UvH and HKU.
    Judith has a background in humanistic studies and promoted with a (legal theory) research of mediation practices between offenders and victims in criminal law (Restorative Justice). Previously, she also conducted research into normative professionalism at the Amsterdam police, and into various healthcare practices among district teams and the juvenile and elderly care (from Stichting Presentie).
  • Is the project coordinator of Meaningful Artistic Research. Marieke’s interest lies in art and healthcare. These two themes are often combined in her projects as curator and cultural scientist. Marieke focuses on questions such as: When is somebody healthy and who decides this? How can societies become more equal, with less stigmatisation and more accessibility? In which ways can the experiencing of art contribute to wellbeing? How can emotions, memories, or thoughts manifest themselves physically? After the bachelor General Cultural Sciences and the research master Art and Visual Culture at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Marieke worked for various art institutions and events as (assistant) curator, programme coordinator and audience guide.

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  • Marielle Schuurman is a graphic designer and action researcher. In recent years she has conducted research into more flexible maternity care (the Maternity Dialogue) and transdisciplinary collaboration on Age-Friendly Communities. She designs creative workforms to really explore the issues together with those involved: what emerges when you start from (shared) values, knowledge from experience and creativity? The collaboration in ecosystems in nature is a great source of inspiration for her visual work.