skip to content

Department of History of Art

 
The History of Art Postgraduate Research Seminar taking place in Lent Term 2026 explores the theme ‘Critical Biographies: Personal History as Method and Matter’. The transhistorical series brings together scholars, curators, and artists to take stock of the long-standing tensions surrounding art historical life-writing. The sessions will examine how biography can function as a critical tool to expand established historical narratives by uncovering artists and makers often kept at the margins of the discipline as well as generating new readings of established subjects.

 

Wednesday 4th of February

Dr François Quiviger (The Warburg Institute, London)

Senses, Languages and Lives of Bernard Palissy (1510-1590)

 

Thursday 12th of February

Dr Naomi Pearce (Aberystwyth University)

Between Love and Work: Bisexual Perspectives in the Art of Roberta M. Graham and Helen Chadwick

 

Wednesday 18th of February

Dr Cassie Davies-Strodder (Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

Wardrobes and Biographies

 

Wednesday 25th of February

Dr Jessica Barker (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London)

Medieval Monuments and the Art-History of Emotion

 

Wednesday 4th of March

Prof Emerita Griselda Pollock (University of Leeds)

Situated Lives: Analytical Concepts: Historical Inquiry: Biography as a Critical Resource in Art History

 

Wednesday 11th of March

Dr Serena Dyer (De Montfort University, Leicester)

Material Life Writing: Women, Making, and Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain

 

Wednesday 18th of March

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley (Berlin and London) in conversation with Dr Kareem Estefan (University of Cambridge)

Understanding the Audience as a Medium

 

 

Seminars will take place 5-6pm in Lecture Room 1 (except on the 25th of February, taking place in the Classroom) at the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art, 1-5 Scroope Terrace

 

All are warmly invited to join and there is no need to register!

 

The seminar is made possible by generous support from the Department of History of Art, The Welland Family Trust at St Catharine’s College, and Pembroke College

 

Organised by Miguel Arrais Pacheco, Molly Judd, and Henriette Marsden