The department of Art History & World Art Studies is an open, dynamic, and forward-thinking department that has consistently challenged conventional divisions of scholarly activity. For decades we have developed a uniquely wide-ranging, diverse and interdisciplinary research culture.
In REF2021, UEA’s Art and Design submission was ranked 13th out of 84 departments in the country. Particular research strengths include:
- Modern and Contemporary Art
- Museums, Heritage, Curating and Exhibition Histories
- Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture
- Art and Anti-Colonial Discourse
- Artists’ Photography and Film
- Visual Culture of Climate Change
- Art & Ecology
- Dialogues between Visual Art and Literature
- African Art and Archaeology
- Japanese Art and Culture
We work alongside two further research units: the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas (SRU), and the Sainsbury Institute for Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC). We also collaborate with the Sainsbury Centre staff on various exhibitions, projects and initiatives. In addition, we currently host three Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellows:
- Dr. Gabriella Nugent, who specializes in global modern and contemporary art, with an emphasis on cross-cultural interactions and themes of decolonisation and globalisation.
- Dr. Lauren Rozenberg, an art historian whose research centres on the body, the history of medicine and image-making in the late Middle Ages.
- Dr. Moran Sheleg , who specializes in modern and contemporary art, and especially discourse surrounding abstract art since the 1960s.
- Past Leverhulme Fellows in the department include Dr Rye Dag Holmboe, whose work focused on the relationship between modernist art and psychoanalysis (he is now a practicing analyst), and Dr William Carruthers, now Lecturer in Heritage and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Essex.
If you’re interested in applying to be a Leverhulme Fellow in the department, we’d love to hear from you. You can make informal enquiries to individual members of department staff, and find out more about UEA’s Leverhulme Fellowship process here.