"What we share is knowledge": A Study of Artist-Researchers Navigating Professional Uncertainty through the Lens of Meaningful Work

In the context of professional precarity and limited institutional support, early-career artist-researchers are challenged to define and sustain a meaningful professional practice. This thesis investigates how they experience and cultivate meaningfulness through their work. While artistic research is increasingly recognized as a legitimate mode of knowledge production (McNiff, 2011), the professionalization of this field often unfolds in an environment marked by economic insecurity, inconsistent recognition, and unclear career pathways. The study responds to this context by asking: How do artist-researchers experience and cultivate a sense of meaningfulness in their early career phase? To answer this question, the research draws on eight in-depth interviews with early-career artist-researchers who studied in, or currently work in the Netherlands. A reflexive thematic analysis was used to explore their lived experiences, drawing on the framework of meaningful work as proposed by Lips-Wiersma and Wright (2012), which identifies dynamic tensions between self and other, being and doing, and reality and inspiration. This framework, originally developed in organizational studies, was adapted here to account for the existential, embodied, and relational dimensions of artistic research practice. Four thematic clusters were developed: navigating precarity through reflexivity, resisting systems of visibility and recognition, constructing resonance through artistic process, and building interdependent communities of support. These themes illuminate how meaningfulness is not only experienced, but actively constructed in relation a yet not established professional field and absent institutional support. The findings show that meaningfulness operates not only as a subjective feeling, but as a relational and processual practice. Artist-researchers engage in a continual negotiation between artistic autonomy and social relevance, personal values and systemic pressures. While they seek to make their work accessible and impactful, they also protect its integrity by resisting instrumentalization and creating their own ecologies of support. This research contributes to the understanding of meaningful work in precarious creative fields and raises critical questions about the ethics of professionalization under neoliberal conditions. It highlights the need for alternative infrastructures that support care-based, relational, and non-transactional modes of working. Ultimately, the study positions artistic research not only as a site for meaning-making, but as a vehicle for redefining the role of art in society, proposing new avenues for how value is created and sustained beyond the arts.