Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Newcastle is an inter-discipline spanning theatre, performance, visual art, digital technologies, and hybrid variants of these discrete areas of creative endeavour. The University of Newcastle's Performing Arts research is rated as 'world standard' in the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) assessment conducted by the Australian Research Council (ARC). Research groups, such as Collaborative Environments for Creative Arts Research (CeCAR), and our Creative Industries Research and Innovation Cluster (CIRIC) bring together national and international researchers in the creative arts, humanities, sciences, health and social sciences with external collaborators in the community, industry, other universities and institutes. The School of Creative Arts is home to the peer-reviewed, inter-disciplinary academic journal Popular Entertainment Studies. Masters by Research students will benefit from our lively inter-disciplinary postgraduate environment, which includes generous funding and material support for graduate research students. What you can research Research proposals are invited in the following areas: digital technologies live art installation contemporary hybrid performance political and applied performance circus (historical and contemporary) popular entertainments physical theatre performer pedagogies contemporary and historical Australian performance Research methodologies In order to facilitate the diverse span of research encompassed by the hybrid discipline of Creative and Performing Arts, a broad range of research methodologies are applied. These include, but are not limited to methodologies particular to the creative arts, such as practice-as or practice-led research, and methodologies that move beyond traditional research to include the reflexive and exploratory nature of research in the creative arts. Additionally, some research projects naturally rely upon methodologies associated with the Humanities and Social Science, such as historiography, archival-based research, ethnography, and action research.