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Whether you have a clear research direction or just some emerging ideas, we can help you shape and strengthen your proposal, connecting you with relevant supervisors.
Reading School of Art has a long history of innovative practice-based PhDs in Art. Our research engages with new and emergent forms of knowledge production developed through practice. We recognise how practice shapes our understanding of artistic and curatorial research.
We supervise research in:
artistic research
curation
performance and publication projects
critical art writing
aritsts’ film and video
creative interdisciplinary research
collections and archives
These are all underpinned by an emphasis on critical art theory, art history and philosophy:
post-colonialism
de-colonisation
performance and subjectivity
ecologies
embodiment and precarity
radical art pedagogy
participation and public sphere
Get in touch with the School so we can help you develop your proposal. Find out how to apply for a PhD
PhD Practice in Curating is a ‘by distance’ programme that understands the doctoral cohort and faculty as a supportive environment of shared knowledge production.
We especially encourage applicants with a track record of curating, who are already curatorial professionals working in museums and galleries.
Doctoral candidates develop their curatorial research and writing skills, in conceiving, organizing, as well as carrying out independent and/or collaborative research in an environment that is dedicated to interdisciplinary exchange, and shared knowledge production.
The thesis and the projects are developed in close dialogue with the Programme Director - Professor Dorothee Richter and the second supervisor provided by research staff in Art.
PhD Practice in Curating is supported through regular reading groups, presentations, and exhibition tours. The doctoral cohort critically utilizes the editorships of the discipline leading journal OnCurating, edited by Richter, as well as the public symposia and conferences that the research platform supports with partners such as documenta, tba21 and ARCO Seoul. Recent iterations include conferences: De-Colonizing Art Institutions, supported by Kunstmuseum Basel; Curating in Feminist Thought, Migros Museum; Our Hegemonic Machines, Bucharest Biennial; Curating on the move, conference and workshop examining ecology and world-making with the Taipei Biennale in partnership City University, Hong Kong.
Published thesis from PhD Practice in Curating researchers can be found here or are retrievable from the British Library database EThOS.
For more information or to express your interest in applying, please contact Dorothee Richter at d.i.richter@reading.ac.uk
