Doctoral Unit

BAU Doctoral Unit aims to support and promote doctoral theses based on practices in the field of design and art.

It is a space created to validate and give space, within the academic sphere, to forms of knowledge and research that emerge from the practice itself, to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and to promote cooperation within the BAU research community.

This unit encourages the use of diverse, innovative and unique methodologies, and understands doctoral research as a relational act, which takes the form of productive exchanges with the respective communities of practice and BAU’s own research community.

This unit also promotes research that operates as agents of social transformation, attentive to the challenges of its present and its context, and that seeks to intervene significantly in reality.

Axes of research

Research at BAU is articulated around six fundamental axes: social and climate transformation, art and design policies, innovation and audiovisual creation, technopolitics, pedagogy and creativity, and the relationship between art, science and magic.

The doctoral theses that are developed in the BAU Doctoral Unit can form part of the projects, groups and initiatives that belong to the following Research Units:

Artistic Research Unit
Audiovisual Design Research Unit
Institute of Political Materialities and Social Transformation Unit

These units are part of the GREDITS Research Group, consolidated by AGAUR (SGR 20217-2019).

What is it like to take a Doctoral Programme at BAU?

At BAU we don’t want the theses to be experienced as an individualised process, but rather as part of a community that will provide support, accompaniment, moments of encounter and exchange, both among doctoral students and between them and the faculty. To this end, we have monthly training sessions during the academic year consisting of seminars and workshops, as well as 2 annual meetings that bring together the entire doctoral community: the Spring School and the Annual Follow-up Commissions. We also encourage close support with frequent meetings between thesis supervisors and students.

Doctoral research at BAU puts practice at the centre. Our aim is for doctoral research to enable us to extract the knowledge that is implicit in our own practice in order to be able to communicate and share it with society. Our theses are not, however, unrelated to theory. The training programme offers tools so that doctoral research incorporates critical reflection, knows how to navigate among different currents of thought and use conceptual tools, but in such a way that theory is at the service of practice and not the other way around.