The Department's regular Research Seminar Series brings a range of national and international speakers to Aberdeen to share their cutting-edge research, as well as allowing members of the department (including doctoral students) to give papers on work in progress.
Seminars usually take place in 50/52 College Bounds Room 009 at 5.15pm.
2025/26
Rebecca Macklin – Oct 8, 2025
Title: Visualising the Tar Sands: Aesthetics, Relationality and Repair
Kate Anderson – Nov 26, 2025
Title: Reframing King James VI & I in a Heritage Context and Beyond
[Co-hosted with CEMS.]
Charlotte Cooper Davies – December 10, 2025
Title: Christine de Pizan and the City of Ladies Master: Colour and Power in the Epistre Othea
Andrew Patrizio and Olga Smith – Feb 4, 2026
Title: Methods for Ecocritical Art History
Maddie Hewitson – April 22, 2026
Title: The First Covenant: understanding the role of the Hebrew Bible in Victorian art
Anne Daffertshofer – May 20, 2026
Title: Anthropocene Mobilities in Contemporary Art: Exploring a Movement-Oriented Lens in Times of Ecological Crisis
2024/25
Stephanie O’Rourke (University of St Andrews) – Extracting Romanticism
Emilie Oléron (Queen Mary University of London) – Linda Nochlin, 'Art Historian engagée'
Jorge Lopez Malgor (University of Oviedo) –The recovery of a multiple heritage: Spanish neo-medieval architecture in the 19th century
Hans Hones (University of Aberdeen) – Art History and Formalism
Rebecca Mellor (Science Museum) – Seeing Things Queerly
Charlotte Wrigley (University of Stavanger) – The Smoulder: On Ice, Fire, and the Zombie Temporalities of a Seed
Beth Welburn (Art of Protest Gallery, York) – Art in Retail: Managing a Commercial Art Gallery
Sarah Bromage (University of Stirling Collections) – Curating Conversations: The Role of Art in University Life
Seren Nolan (Independent Researcher) – Feeling Antiquity: Women, classicism and sentiment
Giulia Champion (University of Southampton) – Visualising the Deep: What the Speculative Infrastructure of Deep-Sea Mining Reveals (and Erases)
2023/24
Isabelle Gapp (University of Aberdeen) – All Aboard the Nascopie: Image-making and Coastal Memory in the Eastern Canadian Arctic
Sarah Smith () –
Arpita Shah (Independent Artist) - In Conversation with Catriona McAra at Aberdeen Art Gallery
2022/23
Sandra Cardarelli (University of Aberdeen) – Visual Networks in Renaissance Florence: Filippo Lippi's Alessandri Altarpiece in the Met Collections
Abigail Jubb (University of York) - Reimagining the 'Thin Ideal': An Alternative Materiality of the Fashionable Silhouette, c.1880-1930
Bárbara Barreiro León (University of Aberdeen) - Identity and Myth in the Spanish Folklorica in Art and Visual Culture
Sam Rose (University of St Andrews) - David Hockney and the Early 60s Rediscovery of Representation
2021/22
Edwin Coomasaru (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art) – Brexit and the Occult: Gendered Ghosts of Empire
Hannah Ryan (St Olaf College) - How to Hold Onto a Hurricane
Frances Sands (Sir John Soane's Museum, London) - Architectural Drawings in Context: the Collection of Robert and James Adam
Katherine Weikert (University of Winchester) - Architecture, Senses and Emotion: Eadmer's Canterbury
2020/21
Simon Constantine (University of Aberdeen) - Street Photography Revisited: Garry Winogrand and the 'Look of Non-Art'
Rebecca Gill (National Gallery, London) - Virtual Veronese
Eleanor Neumann (University of Virginia) - Maria Graham and the 1822 Chilean Earthquake
Stephanie Schwartz (University College London) - Recursive Histories and American Physiognomies: Revisiting Walker Evans's “American Photographs”
Lieke Wijnia (Museum Catharijne Convent, Utrecht) - Mary Magdalene in the Museum