Art History

Overview

In Art History at Aberystwyth University, staff offer research supervision in

• 19th- and 20th-century European art, especially British
• the visual culture of Wales, Welsh art and craft, collecting and curatorial practices
• British printmaking and the illustrated book
• the history of photography
• Australian art
• the visual culture of religions
• women’s art, craft and design
• museology
• 20th-century British and world ceramics

The collections of the School of Art Museum provide a focus for funded research projects and postgraduate study. Staff disseminate their research through the curation of touring exhibitions, the publication of books, catalogues and articles, the delivery of public lectures, and through project- or field-dedicated websites and online databases. Much of the research involves original investigation leading to new knowledge and improved insights into the collections.

Originally based on the early records of the Craft Potters’ Association of Great Britain, the Ceramic Archive now collects print, audio, video and electronic documentation relating to contemporary and studio ceramics.

The Centre for Studies in the Visual Culture of Religion encompasses traditional high- and applied-art mediums, as well as low-art forms, ephemera, and manifestations of the religious imagination, produced by orthodox, mainstream and marginal religious groups, past and present.

The Centre for the Material Culture of the Photograph is concerned with the development of unique enquiries into historic, alternative and hybrid photographic processes; the photograph's ontological presence; and the photograph as object (collected, read, stored, displayed, iconicised).

In addition, the University offers a growing number of interdisciplinary research seminars (e.g. gender studies, African studies, performance and politics, history) in which postgraduates participate in areas relevant to their work. The School encourages doctoral students to exhibit or publish their work and participate in conferences and field trips. To this end, the University stages workshops on academic publishing during which students receive advice on exhibiting and publishing from experienced staff.