Summer Symposium

Currently in its 19th year, Summer Symposium has grown into a two-day international event which celebrates current research within art history by emerging Doctoral and Early Career Researchers. Over the years we have welcomed various students, academics, museum professionals, and practicing artists to participate in the vibrant Summer Symposium programmes, which often include private out-of-hours tours to exhibitions and art collections and opportunities to build networks with peers on an international scale.

The 2018 Summer Symposium is taking place at The Hepworth Museum and University of Leeds on 26-27 June under the theme (Re-)Forming Sculpture, featuring keynotes by Martina Droth (Yale Center for British Art) and Rebecca Wade (Leeds Museums and Galleries, based at the Henry Moore Institute). The DECR is particularly delighted to welcome Rebecca Wade as a keynote. Whilst completing her Ph.D at the University of Leeds Rebecca spoke as a student during the 2010 Summer Symposium Architectural Objects: Discussing Spatial Form Across Art Histories held at the Henry Moore Institute. Here is a wonderful example of the importance of Summer Symposium as a platform for Ph.D and Early Career Research, often giving emerging scholars one of their first opportunities to lecture at an art history conference, and only eight years later we are delighted to welcome back Rebecca as a Summer Symposium keynote.

Over the last nineteen years Summer Symposiums have been organised across the UK on a variety of themes, from University of Essex (2002); University of Exeter (2004); University of Glasgow (2005); Art & the Senses at University of East Anglia (2006); Art and Power at University of St Andrews (2007); Reading Images: Frames and Frameworks at University of Bristol (2009); Subversive Beauty at Loughborough University (2011); Art and Science: Knowledge, Creation and Discovery at the Royal Academy of Arts (2012); Identity: Construction and Meaning at the University of Oxford (2013); Fashion and Art History at the University of York (2015); Gender in Art, Production, Collection, Display (2016) and Re/Presenting the Body: Between Art and Science at University of Glasgow (2017).

You can find out more about this year’s Summer Symposium and book tickets via our Eventbrite page:

Summer Symposium 2018 | (Re-)Forming Sculpture

To keep up to date on our news and events subscribe to our newsletter. We send updates once a month, and you can choose what you want information to receive from us when you sign up. Click here to find out more.