RMA Practice Research Study Group

About us

This is the site for the Practice Research Study Group of the Royal Musical Association UK (RMA), coordinated by Scott McLaughlin (University of Leeds) and Mira Benjamin (City University London). The Study Group focusses on the needs and interests of Practice/Artistic Researchers across Music in HE. Aiming for as broad a church as possible, this includes (but is not limited to) composers, performers, sound-artists, improvisers, computer musicians, live-coders, historically-informed, experimental music and others. Equally, we welcome any researchers in areas not normatively considered as ‘practice’ but where researchers may have practice-based outputs, such as ethnomusicology, psychology, or popular music and production. 

The group’s activities include liaising with research funding bodies, maintaining open dialogue with related disciplines and their subject associations, working to improve access to a diverse range of good practice in documentation of practice research, and ensuring that Practice Researchers have consistent sources of advice about requirements for national-level exercises such as research audits. The steering group has been together since 2015, when it was formed as follow-on activity from a Practice-as-research discussion day hosted by University of Manchester and Nick Fells. The group had a specific remit to assess current regulations of REF and research funding bodies with respect to practice research. The group met on several occasions in 2016–17 to discuss findings and ultimately to make recommendations in the run-up to REF2021. 

The group has been liaising with PRAG-UK (practice research advisory group), and actively contributing to their cross-disciplinary discussions around practice research in UK HE. The most recent study group event was an RMA Study Day on good practice in practice research, held at University of Leeds in June 2019. Over the next few years the group aims to develop a diverse range of good practice examples in documentation of practice research. Ideally this would be hosted centrally by the RMA, but of course this will need to be discussed. The group will work towards documenting consistent and practical advice for Practice Researchers, and practitioners new to research. The group would like to hold an annual national symposium to foster ongoing discussion and showcase good practice.