Research

We are interested in hearing from students wishing to undertake postgraduate level work in Art history at the MLitt or doctoral level. Please contact one of the supervisors below if you are thinking about applying for an MLitt or PhD in their subject area. We are also keen to hear from postdoctoral researchers who are interested in developing their projects at Aberdeen.

Dr Joanne Anderson: Supervision is offered in the history of late-medieval and Early Modern art and visual culture, particularly in the Alpine countries and Italy; Art and Religion; and the history of exhibitions.

Dr Hans C. Hönes: Supervision is offered in the history of European art and visual culture of the 18th and 19th centuries; art historiography and art theory; and the intersections of Art and Ecology. Hans is co-Director of the George Washington Wilson Centre for Art and Visual Culture.

Dr Helen Pierce: Supervision is offered in the history of Early Modern British and Scottish Art; Print Culture in Early Modern Europe; and the history of collecting.

The Department's regular Research Seminar brings a range of international speakers to Aberdeen to share their cutting-edge research, as well as allowing members of the department (including doctoral students) to give papers on work in progress.

Talks Usually Take Place in 50/52 College Bounds Room 009 at 5.15pm.

2024/25

Stephanie O’Rourke (University of St Andrews) – Extracting Romanticism

Emilie Oléron (Queen Mary University of London) – Linda Nochlin, 'Art Historian engagée'

Jorge Lopez Malgor (University of Oviedo) –The recovery of a multiple heritage: Spanish neo-medieval architecture in the 19th century

Hans Hones (University of Aberdeen) – Art History and Formalism

Rebecca Mellor (Science Museum) – Seeing Things Queerly

Charlotte Wrigley (University of Stavanger) – The Smoulder: On Ice, Fire, and the Zombie Temporalities of a Seed

Beth Welburn (Art of Protest Gallery, York) – Art in Retail: Managing a Commercial Art Gallery

Sarah Bromage (University of Stirling Collections) – Curating Conversations: The Role of Art in University Life

Seren Nolan (Independent Researcher) – Feeling Antiquity: Women, classicism and sentiment

Giulia Champion (University of Southampton) – Visualising the Deep: What the Speculative Infrastructure of Deep-Sea Mining Reveals (and Erases)

2023/24

Isabelle Gapp (University of Aberdeen) – All Aboard the Nascopie: Image-making and Coastal Memory in the Eastern Canadian Arctic

Sarah Smith () – 

Arpita Shah (Independent Artist) - In Conversation with Catriona McAra at Aberdeen Art Gallery

2022/23

Sandra Cardarelli (University of Aberdeen) – Visual Networks in Renaissance Florence: Filippo Lippi's Alessandri Altarpiece in the Met Collections 

Abigail Jubb (University of York) - Reimagining the 'Thin Ideal': An Alternative Materiality of the Fashionable Silhouette, c.1880-1930

Bárbara Barreiro León (University of Aberdeen) - Identity and Myth in the Spanish Folklorica in Art and Visual Culture

Sam Rose (University of St Andrews) - David Hockney and the Early 60s Rediscovery of Representation

2021/22

Edwin Coomasaru (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art) – Brexit and the Occult: Gendered Ghosts of Empire

Hannah Ryan (St Olaf College) - How to Hold Onto a Hurricane

Frances Sands (Sir John Soane's Museum, London) - Architectural Drawings in Context: the Collection of Robert and James Adam

Katherine Weikert (University of Winchester) - Architecture, Senses and Emotion: Eadmer's Canterbury

2020/21

Simon Constantine (University of Aberdeen) - Street Photography Revisited: Garry Winogrand and the 'Look of Non-Art'

Rebecca Gill (National Gallery, London) - Virtual Veronese

Eleanor Neumann (University of Virginia) - Maria Graham and the 1822 Chilean Earthquake

Stephanie Schwartz (University College London) - Recursive Histories and American Physiognomies: Revisiting Walker Evans's “American Photographs”

Lieke Wijnia (Museum Catharijne Convent, Utrecht) - Mary Magdalene in the Museum