If you do meet the course requirements, applicants are encouraged to read the bio’s listed below and select a supervisor who closely matches their research project/interests. The application will then be reviewed by the proposed supervisor. Applicants will be invited to an interview if shortlisted. If an applicant does not have a proposed supervisor, title and detailed research project with a clear art historical focus, their application will be rejected prior to academic review. See:
Professor Rosalind (Polly) Blakesley - Due to a change in role within the University, Professor Blakesley will not be accepting MPhil students for several years
Dr Rachel Coombs - Visual and musical culture of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century France. My broader research interests lie in the interrelationships between the visual arts and music, the role of these arts within collective and cultural memory, and the ways in which the practice of these arts is informed by religion and politics
Professor Donal Cooper - Italian late Medieval and Renaissance art
Dr Charlotte Davis - Early modern material cultures in the British Isles and Europe, intellectual exchange and artist education, patronage, art and social mobility. Architecture, sculpture, interior decoration, and garden design
Dr Elizabeth Deans - Research interests: architecture, interiors, architectural drawings, prints, texts, decorative art, object theory, and material culture in (or through networks of) Europe and America in the early modern period (c.1550-1800)
Professor Caroline Van Eck – European art and architecture and their theories, in particular French, the reception of Graeco-Roman art, the anthropology of art, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and Aby Warburg
Dr Kareem Estefan - Film, video, and digital media, particularly Arab moving-image practices, documentary and Global South cinema, and activist engagements with colonialism and its legacies in contemporary art and film
Dr Christina Faraday - British art, architecture and material culture from the late 15th to the early 17th centuries; relationships between art and music, art and literature
Professor Alyce Mahon - 20th-century art, especially Surrealism, performance and feminist art practice (Professor Mahon will not accepting MPhils until October 2026)
Professor Alexander Marr - European and British art and architecture, 16th and 17th centuries
Dr Yelda Nasifoglu - Early modern art and architecture in Britain and Europe; exchanges between art and science, architecture and mathematics; history of the book and the circulation and readership of books related to art and architecture
Dr Saul Nelson - Research interests: Modernist painting (19th and 20th Century); contemporary painting; Marxist, decolonial, and feminist art history/theory
Dr Xin Peng - Film history, classical Hollywood cinema, critical race and postcolonial theories, Asian American studies and transnational cinemas
Dr Frank Salmon - British and European Architecture, 17th-19th century
Dr Laura Slater - Medieval art and architecture
Dr Amy Tobin - 20th- and 21st-century art, and moving image, especially in relation to feminism, gender politics, queer and post-colonial theory (
Applicants are encouraged select a supervisor who closely matches their research project/interests. The application will then be reviewed by the proposed supervisor. Applicants will be invited to an interview if shortlisted. If an applicant does not have a proposed supervisor, title and detailed research project with a clear art historical focus, their application will be rejected prior to academic review. Please note that the Department places emphasis upon competence in foreign languages required for work in the chosen area of specialisation. Language tuition in Latin and modern foreign languages are available, but students who already possess the necessary language skills will be better prepared to undertake the course.