Supervising PhD candidates in practice led research degrees

Supervising practice-led research both enables a broader view of knowledge than conventional academic gatekeeping, and involves a significant teaching and learning experience. This paper addresses the challenges of supervising PhD candidates in practice-led research that culminates in a submission of an artefact and exegesis. It indicates the supervisors responsibilities in developing pedagogical insights and signposts as an informed critic/critical friend with knowledge of genre inscription and textuality and discourse questions and theories. This paper develops from my interest in how to produce a directive and supportive yet non-didactic program that enables both the candidate and the supervisor. In this paper I utilise the postmodernist methodology of a 'mystory' based on Gregory Ulmer's proposition that there is in academic writing the self and the researched, the conscious intellectual semiotic and that arising from storytelling. 'Mystory' encompasses the self, the story and the mystery of this and puts under erasure all claims to fact in writing, revealing the academic text to be sewn together as a compilation of the scholarly, the anecdotal or popular, and the autobiographical. This paper displays how the mystorical approach enables academic writing and language to be open, explorative and aware of its own evanescent nature.