Dr. Ariel Moy

I began my art’s therapy journey with MIECAT in 2008 completing the Graduate Diploma and falling in love with an exciting and encompassing therapeutic and research approach. Through further art’s inquiry, a research question emerged: What is it like for mothers to hold their children? I quickly discovered that it would require the depth of time, experience, exploration and expression a doctorate can provide and so moved over from the Masters program into the Professional Doctorate in Therapeutic Arts Practice.  

Working at MIECAT from 2018, I teach within the Studio Stream including Emerging Inquiry 1 and 2 as well as the supervision of students undertaking research and work placements. Ongoing teaching roles support a solid grounding in, and enthusiasm for, art’s based research (ABR), supervision, pedagogy and therapy.  

My educational background and experience in psychology and philosophy have interacted with MIECAT’s ABR approach in intriguing and challenging ways enabling a wide perspective on research paradigms and their potential consequences. I continue to engage with varying inquiry approaches and their philosophical and axiological underpinnings. My supervisory and research style privileges working reflexively with ongoing awareness and development of our relational situatedness. We work to understand the values and assumptions we bring to our research, and the relational power dynamics and ethical considerations at play in all stages of the inquiry.  

In support of this, I employ a multimodal approach that responds to and with experiencing and emerging awareness across different but interrelated modalities of being and knowing. These include the experiential/embodied, creative/aesthetic, conceptual and relational domains. I encourage and support engagement with transdisciplinary and multimodal sources of insight to help explore, inform, question, develop and present research.  

Working iteratively, we’ll move between phases of spaciousness and radical openness to more structured periods where we focus in on methodology, what is considered data, conceptualisations, emerging understandings, and presentation. One of the joys but also challenges of ABR is the potential for endless data generation and the ongoing exploration and re-exploration of data resources relevant to it. This calls for periods of refining, slowing down and pausing in service of the ‘final’ doctoral artefacts, exegesis and/or thesis.  

It is vital that you formulate an initial question that feels open enough but also intriguing enough to engage for the duration of the doctorate. I have found that as challenging as a doctorate can be, once completed the initial research question can be re-engaged with and developed in other forms, including potential books, journal articles or chapters; exhibitions, performances or ongoing grant supported research. 

As ABR is such a rich and wide-ranging approach, considerations of value and rigour can be attended, in part, by transparently, succinctly, and evocatively capturing the inquiry process, significant relationships and contextual understandings along the way. Both the doctoral program and my supervisory style, support multimodal recording of each stage of the process. We may find that events or encounters that appear serendipitous but not significant, later emerge as pivotal nodes in the inquiry ‘rhizome’ or mapping.  

I will journey alongside you from the initial research question to your final presentation. As I am one part of an experienced and diverse doctoral team, you will also find that you have access to varying and enriching perspectives, experiences and inquiry approaches throughout.  

I enjoy a focus on radical intersubjectivity (or Karen Barad’s intra-activity), phenomenology, the ‘more-than-human’ world, creative expression, and attention to what is unfolding in the present moment. Writing in its varying forms, drawing and photography are my main areas of personal arts practice but the power of imagery, sound, taste, scent, movement, and texture may all attended to in the MIECAT approach.  

You can find out more about my work by: 

Visiting my website: www.holdingmatters.com 

Checking out my book, based on my doctoral research and tailored towards practitioners, available through all good booksellers: 

An Arts Therapeutic Approach to Maternal Holding by Ariel Moy (2021, Routledge) 

And other writings: 

Article: Allen, J & Moy, A. (2018) Creative Dialogue: A Process for Research Supervision in Higher Education, Creative Arts in Education and Therapy, 4(2): 190-197. 

(Forthcoming 2023) Chapter: Experiencing and Knowing from a Mother/Child Us in Performing Maternities, Intellect: Bristol.