I studied in visual communication in Berlin, finishing in 2008. I then worked as a freelance designer and writer. I planned to do a PhD in Germany but thought it would be wise to do it in English in terms of career and ended up moving here two years ago with my wife.

The Royal College of Art is a name you come across again and again in the biographies of designers so when I came to London, I naturally checked it out. I wanted to do research but on the other hand, I wanted to do something accessible to an audience beyond fellow researchers. 

Critical Writing at the RCA is a very particular approach. What's great about CWAD here is not just writing for other researchers. Most research is only ever published for other researchers (in the same field as you), but at the RCA the aim is to address an audience that is not doing what you’re doing and to publish for a wider audience. 

The interview was quite focused on checking that I knew why I wanted to do research and had thought through my topic of crowdsourcing in design. I look at websites, such as Quirky.com, that outsource design processes to the online community for social product development. Other organisations have different ways of approaching this, or have different percentage revenues. I’m comparing all the different platforms and systems, looking at what motivates people to contribute and exploring questions of fairness and ethics. 

I’m interested in open source processes from Linux to Wikipedia and how these can be applied to design. It’s open innovation. How does it affect designers? I will take part and see how such systems work and analyse them from within. 

You're eligible for a bursary for as long as you're an MPhil student, but switching to PhD, you lose that. I’m now at that point and am considering whether to complete my research as quickly as possible and not work, or to do it slowly and work. Unfortunately, I didn’t get an AHRC grant – there's a chance of one in 20. But even with the financial pressure, it’s worth being at the College to fulfill my aims. I will have a solid foundation in literature, and the conflicts and points of discussion in design.

I went to the Courtauld Institute of Art & Design to do History of Art and did 20th Century art as a specialism. I’d always enjoyed research, so taking it further and doing an MA was always the plan.

There were three years between finishing my degree and starting here at the Royal College of Art. In that time, I went back to Brighton and got into film, working with a festival there. I was interested in archiving and slide libraries, but also writing for artists, cataloging and that sort of thing.

At this point, I was thinking about my MA and whether to do History of Art, something film-related, library science or information management. Then I saw the CWAD programme. While I was doing my BA the programme didn’t exist and when it started someone sent me an email about it thinking I might be interested. I didn’t apply in the first year as I wasn’t quite ready to decide. 

I applied with samples of writing, extracts from my dissertation, and a couple of short things had written. There are 12 altogether in my year. It’s a small group, so it’s easy to be in a seminar together. The tutors are a mix of writers, artists and academics. The programme is not for writers, it’s about writing. Everyone’s interests overlap, giving a context and diversity that you can’t really define. Put together the knowledge is expansive.

All classes are seminar-based with reading groups led by tutors. We've gone through forms, colours and pattern, and then seminars about the essay as a form, learning the tools and techniques as inherited formats and how people have treated the essay as a form. The reading is so diverse. We go for weeks without reading essays about artists. It means all our writing is so different. We have writing workshops too. The turnover is quite quick, with each project about two to three weeks. They’re meant to be concise and not sustained.

We do have a more sustained project, however, supplemented by short bursts. We have crits. Some people will have knowledge about a particular subject, others will have sophisticated writing techniques. 

There’s a dissertation in the first year, which is quite short – the same as all the art departments. The brief was Archeology of Criticisms, which involves digging around and readdressing historical moments of criticism. You could choose to do whatever you wanted and were encouraged to do primary research.

I found a serial publication from the 1980s called ZG (Zeitgeist) and got in touch with loads of people that had been involved along the way, using the interview to generate new primary source material. I also catalogued the magazine and made a database. There’s a generation gap between those in the 1980s and it’s about talking across that gap. I see it as a way to negotiate the recent past as part of our present. 

For the course, I saved up quite hard and had the fees before I started by living at home. Getting the College bursary also helped. You can work while on the course but not really more than one or two days. It’s structured in a way that you can, as the teaching is always on the same days. Anything more than that is really tough. Time here is precious.