This three-year ARC-funded research project, Connecting Asia-Pacific Literary Cultures: Grounds for Encounter and Exchange, aims to analyse and develop innovative creative practices to connect writers and evolve literary cultures in the Asia-Pacific region. It will elaborate, test, evaluate and communicate an evolving model for best practice in intercultural and transnational exchange, based on principles and processes of ethical encounter and exchange through creative practice. It looks at and builds upon the work of a successful pilot program, Writers’ Immersion and Cultural Exchange (WrICE), which has developed an organic network of 59 writers across 13 countries. The model, premised on situating creative writing as a way of thinking, being and learning collectively, centres on methods of curating and facilitating collaborative residencies.
The project asks: how might writers be supported to develop intercultural and international relationships that augment and transform their creative practices, and produce networks of cooperation across the Asia-Pacific?
The project’s objectives are to:
- develop a novel theoretical model and allied set of protocols and practices for literary intercultural exchange, with a view to improving transnational understanding and cultural literacies
- experiment with, activate, analyse and evaluate the model in action in the Asia-Pacific, focusing on its processes and consequences, via case studies of collaborative residency programs and collective writing laboratories
- examine how questions of ethics and power can be identified and addressed in protocols and practices of cultural exchange involving diverse peoples with different perspectives, histories and resources
- generate new knowledge in creative writing on the relationship between ongoing collaboration and intercultural knowledge exchange and the development of literary artforms, to underpin a strategic approach to developing relationships, not only peer-to-peer between writers, but also sustained network relations between the literary organisations and the national literary ecologies in which those writers are situated.
The PhD researcher will conduct creative practice-based fieldwork as a writer/participant in the project, extending and challenging their existing creative practice.
This is an opportunity to participate in and co-design a range of innovative exercises in creative and intercultural collaboration, alongside creative peers from across the Asia-Pacific, and to theorise and apply the collaborative and intercultural creative writing methods developed and explored through the project.
The candidate will produce a folio of creative work accompanied by a dissertation providing an original perspective on the project’s themes and research questions.
The PhD candidate will become a member of the vibrant and supportive community of practice within the non/fictionLab Research Group, in the School of Media and Communication, under the joint supervision of Professor Francesca Rendle-Short and Professor David Carlin. The candidate will be invited to connect with the Practice Research Symposium - PRS Asia and PRS Australia - PhD creative writing cohorts.
