Creativity, wicked problems and the contemporary PhD

In this paper, I survey the challenges the creative and contemporary PhD make to the academy. I look at the scholarship entailed in creative production and in identifying and working with wicked problems as having similar attributes contributing to the need to create new PhD models. Traditionally, the PhD has been a preparation for a career in the academy, with scholars undertaking it so as to show their capacity to identify a research gap in their area, to develop a research question from that and to build a major and new contribution to knowledge in a written submission of some 100,000 words. This traditional model is based upon the certainties of scholarship within enlightenment ideals of science. These have delivered us great strides in many areas of medicine and science and have also come, because of their productivity, to dominate the arts, particularly the social sciences and psychology. Whilst its value should not be debased, this enlightenment model has been challenged from such different areas of scholarship as creative production and wicked problems. The core ideas in this paper are how we might utilise creativity and emerging ideas of wicked problems to debate the importance of understanding the contemporary PhD.