Carlo De Gaetano starts Professional Doctorate

The PD program was launched as a pilot in 2023 by the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science and SIA. This program introduces a new learning path within higher professional education, aiming to push the boundaries of professional practice. Integrating and establishing this new type of educational trajectory will need to be gradual, allowing space for learning and improvement. This gradual innovating process is particularly appealing to Carlo De Gaetano. “I find it inspiring to be part of a pilot. It’s very enriching for me and carries a certain energy because everything is new; people are still figuring out how to shape it,” he said.

From Workshop to Professional Doctorate

“It actually started two years ago when I developed a workshop with Visual Methodologies Collective and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision as part of the research project Climate Imaginaries at Sea. We aimed to develop ways to engage people in thinking about what life with climate change could look like in the future. We used participatory research methods and artistic research. Soon, I was deeply immersed in this subject and knew it had more potential. But at that time, I wasn’t sure whether to apply for a PhD position or look for a practice-oriented role. However, as the methodologies developed during the research and various experiments, it became clear that this project was much more rooted in practice. I thought applying for a practice-oriented promotion trajectory, a PD, would be a great path to take.”

Reconsidering, Reforming, and Rewriting

“Two years ago, I participated in pre-PD sessions to write a proposal for the first call of the pilot. Unfortunately, my proposal was not selected in the first round. I needed another year to refine and specify my research idea, as the topic is incredibly broad. This period was really valuable. I could delve deeper into the subject and broaden my practical experience through workshops and practical experiments with audiovisual collections and generative AI in the artistic research studio ‘Interspecies Inquiry’ of the research group. Through the pre-PD trajectory, I also connected with people from entirely different professional backgrounds, which helped to mirror and reshape my ideas. I think this extra time was beneficial for rethinking, rewriting, and resubmitting my proposal for a PD.”

An Iterative Approach

“The primary focus of the research is to explore and reinterpret the relationship between humans and nature in the context of the climate crisis. My research specifically addresses the critical climate issue of sea level rise in the Netherlands. In this research, I use participatory and artistic research methods, with the help of cultural visual collections and artificial intelligence, to create fictional visualizations of sea level rise. We creatively explore how humans and other species might coexist in the Netherlands during various climate scenarios in the future. To do this, I aim for an iterative process, allowing different parts of the research to inform and influence each other. I haven’t set up a very rigid structure because I want to keep learning from the research outcomes and my colleagues.”

Adapting to Sea Level Rise

“Researchers and policymakers are already working on descriptions of what the Netherlands might look like up to 150 years in the future due to climate change and how the country can adapt to it. This includes changes in weather patterns, temperature, and water levels, among others. In this part of the research, I plan to investigate how future scenarios about sea level rise are discussed and explained to the public, what kind of images they use, and what perspectives they prioritize. One of the future scenarios about sea level rise I’ve studied is the risk of being overly optimistic about technical solutions, such as viewing rising water as a problem that can only be solved by building higher dams. Other future scenarios are more embracing of nature, seeing water not as something to fight against but to learn to cope with and coexist with.”

Challenging and Transforming

“The second part of the research, which is more connected to what I am currently doing, involves working with the audiovisual collections of the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision and other archives. This process includes creating images and audiovisual collections related to the theme of water and reusing them in participatory workshops as a starting point for imagination. Images and stories from the past can be questioned and transformed into something about the future by drawing, writing, and designing together in a kind of collective climate fiction. In this phase, I would like to continue exploring participatory practices to invite artists, writers, policymakers, architects, and others to envision how the future of this country might look.”

Future Goals

“I aim to create a community of artists and writers to work on the topic of climate change and sea level rise. I also want this project to create a connection between artists and policymakers, climate scientists, and other professionals involved in developing such future scenarios. I think it is important to try to make these scenarios more understandable to the general public. Fiction and artistic methods can contribute to this by making future scenarios about sea level rise more tangible and visible to a broader audience.”

Supervisory team

This PD trajectory is supervised by Sabine Niederer (Professor of Visual Methodologies Collective at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences), Patricia de Vries (Professor of Art & Spatial Praxis at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy), Rasa Bočytė (Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision), and Maya Livio (Artist and Assistant Professor of Climate, Environmental Justice, Media, and Communication at the American University).