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Fine Art Analytics: Mining Doctoral Dissertations on Painting (Greece, 1986-2019)

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Τhis paper aims to map and analyze the intellectual framework of research in Greek doctoral dissertations on painting and its reflection on the international research canvas. By using fine art text analytics and social networks analysis techniques, this study builds the internal and external structure and research relationships of doctoral theses in the Greek National Archive of PhD Theses. Data and metadata were obtained from 156 dissertations available for electronic database searching, covering the period 1986 to 2019 across all disciplines with only criterion the occurrence of the term “painting” in their title, abstract or keywords section. The theses were analyzed to determine growth trends, institutional output, disciplinary context, thematical coverage, interdisciplinarity, and variations among University departments. Results indicate that the growth in the number of doctoral theses on painting, following international trends, rapidly increased after 2003, mainly generated from History and Archaeology departments focusing on 17th to 20th century frescoes and iconography. STEM related disciplines contributed more than anticipated, while no theses from the fields of Fine Art Entrepreneurship, Economics, and Finance were awarded.
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