People
Meet the team in Art History and Cultural Practices.
We, the staff of Art History and Cultural Practices at The University of Manchester, abhor racism and are committed to redressing the issues of discrimination and racialised disadvantage within our disciplines and our own teaching and research practice, and to decolonising our curriculum.
We are determined to produce a departmental culture that welcomes and supports BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled students and staff, and where everyone is equally recognised and can flourish.
We attract the very best talent, and our staff are both international and internationally recognised.
Our inspiring academics can give our students first-hand access to cutting-edge research and real-world knowledge to take with them after graduation.
Head of Art History and Cultural Practices
Staff - Art History
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Dr Anthony Gerbino - Senior Lecturer in Art History
Anthony is a historian of early modern architecture in France and England. He received his PhD from Columbia University and has held teaching and research posts at Wesleyan University, Vassar College, and Oxford University. His research focuses on architectural design and its relation to scientific and technical knowledge. He is currently pursuing two projects, one on cartography and landscape and the other on the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.
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Dr Anne Kirkham - Honorary Research Fellow in Medieval Art
Anne studied art history at Manchester for her BA, MA and PhD (2007). Her PhD on the discourses underpinning European medieval art has prompted research in several directions including interdisciplinary collaborations on medieval medicine in Europe and a main focus on images in manuscripts, especially the visually rich European medieval manuscripts in the John Rylands Library where she is thrilled to be able to teach some of her undergraduate classes.
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Dr Charlie F B Miller - Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory
Charlie writes about the history and theory of modern and contemporary art. His book Radical Picasso: The Use Value of Genius (University of California Press, 2021) deconstructs the Picasso myth, refigures cubism and surrealism, and as such rethinks the history of modernism. He has published widely on surrealism, including most recently ‘Surrealism’s Homophobia’, October 173, 2020. His current research deals with the problem of magic in modern and contemporary art.
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Dr Niccola Shearman - Lecturer in Twentieth-Century German Art and Cultural History
Niccola specializes in German and Austrian art of the twentieth century. Coming from a background in German Studies, she completed a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2018, on the modernist woodcut print in the aftermath of the First World War. In addition to a focus on print histories, her research interests include art and emotion and the psychology of vision; especially the work of Gestalt scientists in 1920s Berlin. She previously held a lectureship at UoM for the academic year 2019/20, when responsibilities included the Art History Field Trip to Vienna.
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Dr Luke Skrebowski - Lecturer in Contemporary Art
Luke’s research and teaching focus on the history and theory of late 20th and early 21st-century art in the UK, Europe, the USA and Brazil, specialising in postconceptual contemporary art and its historical genealogy. His other research interests include: art theory and philosophical aesthetics, critical theory and the history and theory of photography (with a focus on photoconceptualism and its legacies). He holds a BA from the University of Cambridge and an MA and PhD from Middlesex University (Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy/History of Art and Design).
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Dr Emilia Terracciano - Lecturer in Modern Art History
Emilia is a specialist in modern and contemporary art, with an emphasis on South Asian artists and their diaspora, and on critical ecologies. Her research addresses questions of abstraction, materialisms, feminism, ecocriticism, and postcolonialism. She is writing two book projects: the first concerns plants, humans and futurities in art; the second is about artist Simryn Gill. She is the author of Art and Emergency: Modernism in Twentieth Century India (IB Tauris, 2018).
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Dr Colin Trodd - Senior Lecturer in Art History
Colin took his MA and PhD in Art History and Cultural Theory at the University of Sussex. His main research interests include European Romanticism, nineteenth-century British art and art theory, Ruskinian theory and The Arts and Crafts Movement, and the introduction and development of public art galleries, art spaces and systems of cultural management.
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Cordelia Warr - Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Art
Cordelia is an expert on Medieval and Renaissance art with a specific emphasis on female patronage, the representation of dress, and the visual culture of stigmata, which map onto a wider research field investigating the religious body. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Warwick and has taught in higher education for over twenty-five years. She has served twice as head of department (2015-2018 and 2020-2023). She is currently co-editor of Medieval Clothing and Textiles.
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Staff - Institute for Cultural Practices
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Dr Abigail Gilmore - Senior Lecturer in Arts Management and Cultural Policy
Abigail established the MA Arts Management, Policy and Practice at University of Manchester and works with colleagues in the Institute on other taught and research programmes. Her background is in sociological research on cultural policy, beginning with a PhD in Popular Culture and Society at the University of Leicester. Her research now focuses on local cultural management, participation and the different forms of knowledge and evidence used to measure and understand cultural value.
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Dr Roaa Ali - Lecturer in Arts and Cultural Management
Roaa Ali is a Lecturer in Arts and Cultural Management. She is an interdisciplinary researcher focusing on race and diversity in the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs). Roaa researches, teaches and writes on issues of inequality, anti-racism, and the politics of cultural production CCIs. She is a member of the Advisory Board for the Polycultural Institute (Chicago). Her monograph, The Cultural production of Otherness: Contemporary Arab American Drama is forthcoming in 2024.
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Dr Kostas Arvanitis - Senior Lecturer in Museology and ICP Director
Kostas has a MA and PhD in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester and a first degree in History and Archaeology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His research interests cross the fields of museology, archaeology, cultural heritage, and digital media. His expertise lies in the area of Digital Heritage that includes the theory and practice of digital technology in museums, galleries and heritage sites.
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Dr Jenna Ashton - Lecturer in Heritage Studies
Jenna is an experienced curator and producer, working in the areas of heritage, arts, participation, public space, social movements and activism. She is passionate about embedding inclusive practices and co-production methods in the arts and heritage sectors. She has an MA and PhD in Art History and Visual Studies from The University of Manchester. Jenna is also the Founder and Creative Director of Digital Women's Archive North – a Manchester-based feminist arts and heritage organisation addressing social inequalities through creative archiving and documentation.
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Dr Erin Beeston - Lecturer in Cultural Industries
Erin worked in curatorial roles at North-West museums before undertaking her PhD on the history and heritage of Liverpool Road Station at the University of Manchester in collaboration with the Science and Industry Museum. Erin recently worked on a pilot study of Liverpool’s railway heritage, and for Manchester’s Cottonopolis Collective researching cotton in the Manchester Museum Herbarium. Erin’s research interests focus on the relationship between history, memory and material culture.
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Dr Andy Hardman - Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries
Andrew has worked in the creative industries for over twenty years. His research explores the representation, theory and practice of creative production. During his PhD (in art history and visual cultures at Manchester) he formed a production company with two fellow researchers. Their filmmaking, for cultural organisations across the UK, specialises in archival research, documenting cultural practices, and co-producing film as a means of developing audiences and participation with collections and places.
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Dr Ryan Humphrey - Lecturer in Arts and Cultural Management
Ryan has an MA and PhD in Community Music from York St John University. A practitioner within the field of community arts, Ryan has experience managing and delivering community music programmes, working across various contexts with a range of arts and cultural organisations. His research interests relate to areas pertaining to funding structures for community arts, cultural policy, cultural value, social justice, cultural democracy and socially-engaged arts practice.
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Dr Frances Liddell - Lecturer in Cultural Industries
Frances has a PhD in Museum Studies and an MA in Arts Management from the University of Manchester. In partnership with National Museums Liverpool, her PhD research explored the application of blockchain technology in museum audience engagement practices and considered how this technology extends our understanding around digital ownership, authority, and authenticity. Her research interest continues with these themes with a specific focus on digital ownership and reciprocation.
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Dr Emma Martin - Senior Lecturer in Museology
Emma has worked as a curator of ethnography and decorative arts for nearly 20 years, specialising in South Asia, the Himalaya and Tibet. She is leading a new research network called Object Lessons from Tibet and the Himalaya, which aims to bring researchers and museums from across Europe together with members of the Tibetan diaspora for the purpose of sharing and collaborating on Tibet and Himalaya collections-based research.
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Dr Liz Mitchell - Lecturer in Cultural Industries
Liz specialises in the histories and uses of collections. An experienced museum professional and academic, her PhD explored collecting as a source of belonging, through the Mary Greg Collection at Manchester Art Gallery. Liz has previously taught at Manchester School of Art and Liverpool Hope University. She is Curator of the Platt Hall Collection, leading on the community-based redevelopment of an 18th century house and museum in south Manchester.
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Dave O'Brien - Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries
Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries. He has over a decade of research experience ranging across cultural policy, the sociology of culture, culture-led regeneration, and inequality in the creative economy. He is currently part of the AHRC funded Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, as well as researching social class and television production; the value of culture and heritage; creative higher education; and diversity, skills and the future of the creative workforce.
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Dr Simon Parry - Senior Lecturer in Drama and Arts Management
Simon has managed and evaluated a number of arts and education projects across the UK and Europe. He has a BA in Modern Languages (Nottingham), MA in Text and Performance Studies (King’s College London / Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), and a PhD in Drama (Royal Holloway University of London). His research interests include the arts in education, engagements between contemporary science and the arts, activist performance and approaches to arts evaluation.
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Dr Catherine Roberts - Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries
Catherine has a MA in English Literary Culture and a PhD in Tourism Studies from the University of Central Lancashire. A practitioner in regional and national museum learning programmes for over 15 years, Catherine has undertaken project consultancy for UK and European heritage and education projects. Her research interests and practice relate to experiential learning, placemaking and psychologised readings of visitor experience in dissonant/difficult heritage environments.
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Dr Priya Sharma - Lecturer in Cultural Industries
I am Lecturer in Arts Management, Policy and Practice and a current PhD student at Goldsmiths, University of London in the Media, Communications and Cultural Studies department. My research explores articulations of feminist and queer British South Asian identity on social media platforms. I completed my Masters degree at Goldsmiths in Film and the Audio-visual and my undergraduate in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Liverpool.
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Dr Leandro Valiati - Senior Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries
Leandro started his career in Brazil as a professor and policy advisor in Creative Industries and Economy of Culture, creating and leading the most representative policy-oriented academic centre on CCIs. In the past years, he has been working in academic positions and as board member in policy institutions in Spain, France and the UK. His research interests are Culture and Socioeconomic Development, Cultural Policy and Multidimensional Impact of Arts.
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Dr Biyun Zhu - Lecturer In Cultural Policy and Governance
Biyun has a PhD in Cultural Policy and Arts Management from The Ohio State University and a MA in Public Policy from King’s College London. Her research draws on knowledge from multiple disciplines including public policy, international relations, history, and management. She uses cultural policy as a lens to investigate issues in broader fields such as arts organisation governance, creative industries, cultural diplomacy, and soft power.
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Research Assistant under Institute for Cultural Practices
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Claire Burnill-Maier - Creative Manchester Postdoctoral Research Associate (AHRC Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre)
Postdoctoral Research Associate supporting the Cultural Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and Creative Manchester. Research exploring the role of place within the institutional logics of the cultural sector. Interested in the relationships between cultural organisations located in cities and their counterparts located in the satellite towns on their peripheries. Previously postdoctoral fellow at the University of Leeds and Research Associate with the Centre for Cultural Value.
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Matthew Bridson - Research Associate (Port Sunlight Village Trust KTP Project)
Matthew’s research interest lies in the impact of heritage narratives on the socio-cultural landscape of place. His MA (Heritage Studies, University of Manchester) dissertation, which critically analysed problematic discourse related to victims of the 1612 Lancashire Witch Trials, received the 2021 Gill Wright Prize. He is currently leading a Knowledge Transfer Partnerships project helping Port Sunlight Village Trust transform how visitors, residents, and staff engage with the site’s colonial links.
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Dr Marilene Ribeiro - Research Associate (Creative Adaptive Solutions to Treescapes of Rivers Project)
Marilene Ribeiro is an award-winning visual artist and researcher from Brazil. Her practice is focused on interdisciplinary endeavours, bringing together photography, video, intervention and collaboration, with a special interest in the political agency of photography and in the role of image-based media in society. Her projects tackle the environmental and the Human Rights agendas, from a decolonial perspective from the Global South.
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Huw Wahl - Research Associate (Creative Adaptive Solutions to Treescapes of Rivers Project)
Huw Wahl is a filmmaker whose work has been described as using the form-giving, material qualities of moving image to unearth the importance of creative action and its transformative potential. He is broadly interested in documentary, yet feels good work comes from intuition, imagination and the poetry of the process, rather than the technics of truth or fact. To quote the poet Stephen Watts, 'Film is prosaic poetry only / Because poetry is essentially / Prosaic : what is quotidian still is / The stuff of our daily bread.'
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Staff - Digital Humanities, Media and Culture
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Dr Mairéad Pratschke - SALC Chair in Digital Education and Associate Director of eLearning and Teaching Innovation
She holds a PhD in Modern British & Irish History and an MA in European Studies. Her academic research on Irish-language film includes her book Visions of Ireland (2015). She has worked in digital education for 20+ years, first as an online course designer and instructor and later a lecturer in Canada and the USA. She joined Imperial College London's Edtech Lab in 2016, then went to London Business School and spent the last years at higher education start-ups in the UK, Spain and Ireland.
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Dr Łukasz Szulc – Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture
Łukasz (he/him) specializes in critical and cultural studies of digital media at the intersections of gender, sexuality, and transnationalism with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe, especially Poland. He previously worked at the University of Sheffield, London School of Economics and Political Science, and University of Antwerp. He is a member of editorial boards at the International Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of Communication, and Communication, Culture & Critique.
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Dr Luca Scholz - Lecturer in Digital Humanities (Digital and European History)
Luca is a digital historian who applies computational methods to the study of European history. He holds PhD in History from the European University Institute in Florence, having previously studied at Heidelberg and Paris. Before moving to Manchester, where he directs the Digital Humanities Programme, Luca spent three years at Stanford University. He is particularly interested in geospatial analysis, historical data visualisation, and distant reading.
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Dr Sam Hind - Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture
Sam is a media scholar. His research interests include navigational technologies, sensing and the sensor society, algorithmic decision-making, automotive cultures, and mobile play. He completed his PhD on protest mapping at the University of Warwick, and previously worked in SFB1187 Media of Cooperation at the University of Siegen, Germany. He has researched the phenomenon of autonomous driving since 2017, and has a forthcoming monograph on the subject with Palgrave.
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Dr Claire Reddleman - Lecturer in Digital Humanities (Contemporary Art and Digital Culture)
Claire teaches in the areas of Digital Humanities and Art History, and is interested in digital cultural heritage, visual methods, mapping, contemporary art and ‘ways of seeing’ using new technologies. Claire previously taught at King’s College London, and carried out postdoctoral research using visual research methods to engage with the history of France’s penal colonies. She gained her phd in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths and is also a digital artist.
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Library and Archive Studies
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Dr Kenneth Atuma - Lecturer in Library and Archives Studies
Kenneth is a Knowledge and Information Management Specialist and Scholar. His area of specialization is Archives and Records Management and Information Governance. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Information Studies at the University of Glasgow. Previously, he worked and held academic positions in two higher institutions in Nigeria. He is also interested in research around Computational Archiving; Digital Preservation, Information Storage and Retrieval Systems; AI in Libraries, and Health Librarianship.
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Dr Benjamin Wiggins - Senior Lecturer of History and Library & Archive Studies
Dr. Benjamin Wiggins is Senior Lecturer of History and Library & Archive Studies. He is the author of Calculating Race: Racial Discrimination in Risk Assessment (2020) and History and Technology: Twenty-First Century Methods for Researching the Past (2023)—both published by Oxford University Press. He has been a PI on awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities (twice), and the National Science Foundation.
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Honorary professors
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Dr Maria Balshaw CBE – Director of Tate (formerly Director of the Whitworth, University of Manchester and Manchester City Galleries)
Maria succeeded Sir Nicholas Serota as Director of Tate in June 2017. Previously, as Director of The Whitworth and Manchester City Galleries, she was responsible for the artistic and strategic vision for each gallery. Maria was also Director of Culture for Manchester City Council. In 2014 Maria was appointed as a board member of Arts Council England and in June 2015 she was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to the arts.
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Alistair Hudson - Director of the Whitworth and Manchester Art Gallery and Honorary Professor of Useful Art
Alistair was appointed as Director of the Manchester Museum and the Whitworth in 2017. He is co-director of the Assoiacion de Arte Util with Tania Bruguera, and expending international project and online archive that promotes art as a tool for social change. In April 2023 he will take up his new position as the Artistic-Scientific Chairman of the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM) Karlsruhe, Germany taking over from Professor Peter Weibel, who has headed ZKM since 1999.
Visit the Whitworth's website
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Dr Nick Merriman - Director of the Horniman Museum and Gardens
Nick was appointed Director of the Manchester Museum in March 2006. He has focused the Manchester Museum mission on promoting understanding between cultures and working towards a sustainable world and has overseen the refurbishment of most of the Museum’s permanent galleries. He led the Museum’s major capital project to build a new temporary exhibition space and a permanent gallery on South Asia in partnership with the British Museum. In 2018 Nick was appointed Director of the Horniman Museum and Gardens.
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Esme Ward - Director of The Manchester Museum and Honorary Professor of Heritage Futures
Esme was appointed Director of Manchester Museum in April 2018 and is the first woman to hold that position in its 127-year history. Prior to this, she was Head of Learning and Engagement at Manchester Museum and the Whitworth. She holds an MA in French Revolutionary Culture and Theory. In 2016-17 she was a Fellow on the Clore Cultural Leadership programme. Esme is the Strategic Lead (culture) for Age-Friendly Manchester and the Greater Manchester Ageing Hub. She is co-curator of the Arts, Health and Social change programme the World Health Congress 2019-20.
View Esme's profile on the Manchester Museum website
Emeriti
- Prof Helen Rees Leahy - Professor in Museology
- Prof Roger Ling - Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology
- Prof David Lomas - Professor of Art History
- Prof Carol Mavor - Professor of Art History
- Mr David O'Connor - Lecturer in Art History
- Dr Tom Rasmussen - Senior Lecturer in Art History
- Prof Marcia Pointon - Professor Emerita in History of Art