About Field Studies
Field Studies is an emerging independent study programme and research network that offers an alternative model to traditional education in the arts and humanities. It operates as a roaming academy with a base in London from where it organises intensive, week-long residencies in different cities and locations across Europe.
The programme offers practitioners the opportunity to join residencies on an individual basis, or to conjoin a series of modular residencies into an Advanced Study Programme that supports students in the development of a sustained research project over the space of one or two years.
A Choral Method, LUCA School of Art, September 2025
Embodied Critical Thinking
Central to the teaching philosophy of Field Studies is the idea of embodied critical thinking. The experiences and individual knowledge of students act as a fundamental starting point. Learning and collective forms of knowledge emerge from encounters and from activities that materialise at the periphery of the school, at the point where it comes into contact with the world. In practice, this means that residencies and teaching activities do not follow a fixed format and methodology but change depending on context and needs, inviting the active participation of host institutions, partner organisations, local communities and audiences. They vary in focus, intensity, and texture, ranging from interventions to durational projects that practice repetition and returns, from satellite programmes in connection with biennales or symposia to summer schools, from research and writing weeks to the establishment of temporary collectives, libraries, assemblies or civic classrooms.
Field Studies offers a form of study that is radically open and not oriented towards predetermined learning outcomes, but thinking in action. It happens in a space that is alive, and produced according to a set of terms and conditions that are continuously and carefully renegotiated by the people that produce it. Perhaps the guiding figure of Field Studies is the archipelago: not a singular territory, but a series of landings connected by the individual practices of its students and the relationships they form.
A Choral Method, LUCA School of Art, September 2025
Post-education: Advanced Study Programme
Field Studies does not offer institutional accreditation, but study as a form of institutional critique. No previous certificates or degrees are required to join the programme. Students who enrol on a long-term basis develop an independent, postgraduate-level research project with support from dedicated tutors. Rather than a particular subject or topic, the project is based on a contract students draw up with a group of friends and advisors who review the final work as it evolves. The outcome of this review takes the form of a summary of commendations, stored and made publicly accessible in the form of a digital ledger.
Programme 2025–26
In 2026, Field Studies will be staging a series of open residencies and events designed to build a network of partners, form a constitution, and practise new methods of teaching.