British Art History in Practice: Roundtable on Pedagogy

This is an event for DRN members only. You can find out more about the network here.

As researchers in educational institutions, who may also engage in teaching work, the question of pedagogy is central to the lives and work of PhD students. The discipline of art history itself has been shaped by a long tradition of critical approaches to visual art and its histories within British universities and arts institutions. In turn, museums continue to play a key role in public education, with the potential to shape wider attitudes towards British and global history. At the same time, the rise of the ‘digital public intellectual,’ and the use of social media as platforms for academic discussions have altered the cultural landscape, presenting new challenges for cultural critique. This roundtable seeks to encourage PhD students to reflect upon their own pedagogical practices, as embedded in their own research, educational background and teaching practices, as well as the ways in which they can shape public discourse and education more broadly.

Within British arts and educational institutions there is a long-overdue need for reflection, change and action. For those of us carrying out doctoral research within these sites for the production of knowledge and power, there is a renewed urgency to our work. This urgency is acutely felt when connected to questions of Britishness, race, disability and class, questions which are inherently relevant for any researcher now working in the context of a global health crisis, the renewed visibility of white supremacy and its manifestation in ‘the culture wars’. These roundtables will seek to engage with the work of researchers and artists who question British art history’s categorisations and narratives to explore the ways in which academic and arts institutions might respond to historic and contemporary injustices.

This series will provide a space for doctoral research students to explore their own subjectivities, positionalities and emotions, in order to rethink how they approach, reproduce and critique structural inequalities in their work. It will demonstrate how centring questions of access, care and pedagogy can transform British art history, its approaches and methods, its subject matter and its narratives.