28th September 2025
Research on premodern portraits has traditionally focused on identifying the sitters and examining typological and stylistic developments. This includes the analysis of gestures, posture, clothing, attributes, and original frames. Yet, after centuries of research, the identities of countless portrayed individuals... Read More...28th September 2025
The emergence of practice research in art schools in the UK is frequently traced to early definitions of practice-led research (e.g. Frayling 1993) or the inclusion of ‘practical outputs’ in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (HERO 1999). However, the first... Read More...28th September 2025
In today's globalised contemporary art, more artists from marginalised, formerly colonised territories are gaining global visibility. Yet, the asymmetric relationship persists, resulting in a condition where institutional power structures, often situated in the Global North, continue to dominate the production... Read More...28th September 2025
Non-figurative art encompasses visual systems built on repetition, simplification and abstraction. From concentric circles to angular patterns and linear diagrams, these forms have been used across cultures to structure space, convey relationships and generate complex visual experiences. While differing in... Read More...28th September 2025
The session invites papers on figurative uses of plasterwork that extends beyond the ornamental application of the medium. Ornamental plasterwork constitutes the majority of the surviving examples from early modern times and it has dominated art historical approaches. Yet, plasterwork... Read More...28th September 2025
The nineteenth century has often been called the “frenzy of the visible” as new theories, technologies, and artistic practices attempted to visualize the previously unseen. Motivated by a greater interest in invisible, hidden, and out-of-reach phenomena such as the climate,... Read More...28th September 2025
Maps have historically been used to delineate borders, yet artists return to maps to imagine, probe, and redraw border crossings. We consider art historical inquiries on artists’ works which utilize actual geographical maps or gestures at mapping as retracing movement.... Read More...28th September 2025
In recent decades, scholars have increasingly challenged the dominance of canonical centres in art historical narratives. Yet the frameworks of centre and periphery continue to shape how local art histories are researched, written and valued. Too often, studies of regional... Read More...28th September 2025
In this age of instant messaging and sound bites, slow and close looking seem antithetical to our fast-paced culture. Much of the information we receive is often quickly antithetical to our fast-paced culture. Much of the information we receive is... Read More...28th September 2025
Jokes reveal deeply held collective ideas about national identity, gender, race, and class. Although they can be wielded as a cudgel by the majority, caricature and parody can also be powerful subversive tools in the soft armory of the oppressed,... Read More...28th September 2025
This panel will explore the complex interplay of colonial wealth and industrial development in British landscapes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Britain’s imperial reach expanded, wealth amassed through colonial exploitation fuelled drastic transformations of the British countryside, from... Read More...28th September 2025
This session investigates the convergence of landscape, mythology, and sacred geography in the formation, decay, and transformation of ruins within forested or overgrown environments globally, while drawing conceptual inspiration from South Asian sites, such as Bhimbetka’s rock shelters, Simhachalam’s temple... Read More...28th September 2025
This panel will interrogate the complex impact of Jews upon the making of national heritage in early twentieth-century Britain (c.1880–1950). It will reflect on how different members of this minority group simultaneously enriched national collections whilst also fostering organisations devoted... Read More...28th September 2025
Islands have long inspired the artistic imagination—figured as sites of ethnographic encounter, spiritual retreat, or creative kinship. This half-day panel will consider the potential of island-based or island-informed artistic practices for critical reflection, cultural healing, and environmental justice. Oceanic islands... Read More...28th September 2025
Irish women artists have long forged influential paths beyond Ireland, pursuing their careers in defiance of social, cultural, and political barriers. From Parisian academies and London art schools to contemporary biennials and digital platforms, they built diasporic feminist networks that... Read More...28th September 2025
This session explores intermedia practices in art, where “the life of the (moving) image,” as Ethel-Ruth Tawe (2025) notes, follows the movement of people and communities, forced or otherwise. It draws on postcolonial and decolonial theory to interrogate the displacement... Read More...28th September 2025
This panel explores the shift from decolonisation to counter- and retrocolonisation, analysing how Indigenous and minoritarian art traditions, practices, symbols, and materials worldwide have responded to, influenced, appropriated, and subverted colonising cultures—both historically and in contemporary practice. What strategies are... Read More...28th September 2025
The relationship between pictures and images – not only the retinal images processed in visual perception but also the mental images of memories, dreams and visualisations – have been objects of scientific investigation since the late nineteenth century, and philosophical... Read More...28th September 2025
The panel addresses the recent calls for a renewed research method in field of tapestry studies. As Guy Delmarcel (2012) argues, “every type of artwork has different research needs. [...] the art of tapestries contains specific aspects that led to... Read More...28th September 2025
This panel invites analysis of the histories of British Surrealism between its arrival on British shores as marked by the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London and its recent mapping on the national and international stage in centenary exhibitions of... Read More...Copyright 2026. All Rights Reserved