PhD in Artistic Research at KiT


The PhD program at KIT seeks to explore and to articulate art’s and artists’ new potentials in today’s society. These positions require a high level of commitment to contributing to an artistic research environment with high aspirations — to revisit, revaluate and reinvent what candidates see as key aspects of the relationships between art, technology, and society.


The Trondheim Academy of Fine Art is a dynamic, international, intensely collaborative and cross-disciplinary research environment. It aims to attract, educate and train next-generation artists, researchers and practitioners with experiences, skills, creative confidence and theoretical insight.


KIT enables and promotes an understanding of artistic research that is equivalent to scientific research and, at the same time, fully embedded in a University of Science and Technology. This unique constellation allows for novel alliances across academic fields to respond to the complexities of societal challenges and contribute to NTNU’s vision to create “Knowledge for a better world”. The main principles of the program are inspired by the Charter for Advanced Practices, proposed by the COST action European Forum of Advanced Practices (EFAP): https://advancedpractices.net/charter


Currently, seven academic staff members, one postdoc and 11 PhD candidates, complemented with visiting professors, guest teachers and researchers are contributing to the strong reputation of the department in artistic research on Norwegian, Scandinavian, and European level. Individual fellows and their supervisors, post-doctoral researchers and professors are shaping and reshaping an artistic research environment focused on contemporary art while also being genuinely open to artistic research emerging in the fields of design, urban planning, architecture, film and new media.


The candidate’s artistic doctoral work consists of the artistic result, documentation and its critical reflection. It will present its outcome through diverse materials that reflect and document the candidate’s progress over the entire course of the process and will be evaluated as a whole.

Candidates are expected to share the outcome of their artistic research and production on different scales: within the Department and the University, as well as locally and internationally.