Any MA research at University level?

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pakua

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I'm curious to know if anyone here has undertaken, or knows of, any research into MA at University level? Strikes me it would be a rich vein to research if anyone was doing a masters or doctorate in one of many fields. The health benefits, history, perceptions of, etc etc could be the basis of research in say medicine (including physiotherapy, psychology, psychiatry, dentistry (ouch!))- lots of scope here I'm sure, engineering (biomechanics), history (as a speciality say in Eastern history), education (teaching methods, phys ed), social studies (role of MA in the community say), business school (a business plan for, or a financial case study of, an MA school) ....
 

Blooming Lotus

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THere are so many aspects of ma that any of its facets are easily studied at uni lvl. Dr.Sharhar ( or try Shahar / Sharha for alt spelling on search ) from tel aviv uni has written several articles and a book,. He collaborated with Gene Ching from www.kungfumagazine.com on several of those and if you log on there, you'll find links and articles from others doing the same. ;)



btw :- Beijing university has a degree in MA , though you'd have to search on it to find out more. To say MA is fairly broad ( ie:- philosophy/ training strategy / techs/ combat psychology/ practicle application/ history.....and on and on ). What exactly are you asking about??
 
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pakua

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Blooming Lotus said:
What exactly are you asking about??

Bloody Qlander :idunno:

Just curious is all, to see where and how the academic world has studied martial arts, but as a subject in another discipline not as martial arts per se.

Struck me that since lots of under-grads (in any field) must be MA students
too, that if they were agonizing over the topic for any post-grad work, they could easily combine both of their interests as I said, eg MA and engineering/medicine/psychology/education/business whatever
 

Blooming Lotus

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Re :- must be ..... Dwai ( correct).Are and do!! Have personally studied some psychology and counselling , bus mngtmt, health / fitness and nutrition etc prior and doing a phd in chan ( shaolin ) philosophy. Alot of maers I've come in contact with personally seem to have some post -grad in something like medicine ( as I'm gearing twd myself) , bio-mechanics / engineering , behavioural science , Human movement, even history directly relative to ma, and part of any shifu course always ( or usually ) has a business operations component somewhere . Proabaly more equivilent to a small business or bus mgmnt course / diploma.... but as you progress, more often than not, you're likely going to want more information.....
 
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Jason Couch

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Yes, quite a bit. If you go on UMI (might be proquest now), you can search for past dissertations. Many students have done their master's or doctoral thesis/dissertation on some aspect of the martial arts. For example, Poliakoff's "Combat Sports in the Ancient World" started out as a dissertation, and Desch-Obi's diss. on African Martial Arts is still one of the best sources available. (Plenty more "traditional" topics have been studied, but that tends to not attract me as much).

In another vein, you can see how some professors have incorporated martial arts into their academic field at http://ejmas.com/jalt/jaltart_svinth_1102.html

Lastly, don't forget to check out books by academics who also practice, such as John Donohue and more importantly (IMO) Tom Green.
 
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pakua

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Thanks- interesting stuff.

A late friend of mine did his PhD in modelling a part of the human knee in sport. He got an engineering colleague to build a device to capture what data he needed during a golf swing (I think) with guages and video etc. All sorts of forces and motion are in action.

He himself was a top class weightlifter and had also studied karate somewhere along the way. Some of you may have heard of him- his name was Mel Siff and he died in Denver Colorado a year or two back.

I was thinking (as a civil engineering graduate) that studies of the forces exerted in the breaking of tiles and planks would be interesting.
 

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