News from History of Art

History of Art at Edinburgh is a vibrant and active department. Find our regular news listings here.

Catriona Murray has been awarded the Paul Mellon Centre Postdoctoral Fellowship

Catriona Murray has been awarded a six-month postdoctoral fellowship by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art. The fellowships are offered to enable the fellow to transform doctoral research in the field of British art or architectural history into publishable form. Catriona will be preparing a monograph, based upon her PhD thesis, entitled: The Lost Heirs of Stuart Britain: Representing Crisis and Continuity.

The study will examine the representational effects of the premature deaths of royal male heirs in Stuart Britain, elucidating the wide-ranging implications, associations and complexities, embodied in images of lost princes, both during their lifetimes and following their deaths.

Catriona will take up the fellowship at the Department of History of Art, under the mentorship of Dr. Viccy Coltman, in September 2013.

Tamara Trodd awarded Philip Leverhulme Prize 2013-15

It will enable Dr Trodd to pursue her research into the role of machines and technologies in visual culture and the theoretical and aesthetic problems this raises. Her likely immediate focus will be on the idea of 'machine aesthetics' in relation to film and contemporary projected-image work such as that of John Gerrard and Elizabeth Price.

Graduate Research Seminar Series 2012-13

Seminar 1

5.15pm - Lecture Room 1

Minto House

20 Chamber Street

Seminars are free and open to all.

Drinks are served afterwards in the common room.

Henry Moore Foundation post-doctoral fellowship: Dr Luca Palozzi

Dr Luca Palozzi has been awarded a two-year post-doctoral fellowship by the Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds, to work on a project entitled ‘Monumental sculpture and artistic relations in late Medieval Italy. The historiographical context, old-standing paradigms and new perspectives’.

His project will reconsider monumental sculpture in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Italy under the paradigm of artistic relations within Italy and Europe. The study will adress the long-standing and controversial issue of the introduction of the Gothic in Italy, and, more broadly, the ‘geography’ of sculpture in Trecento Italy.

Luca will take up the fellowship at the Department of History of Art starting September 2012.

History of Art Scholarships 2012-13

History of Art is delighted to announce that eleven postgraduate scholarships have been awarded for the academic year 2012-13.

Five of these are full scholarships, paying UK/EU fees plus a living allowance (4 x PhD scholarships; 1 x Masters scholarship).

Each of the remaining six awards is worth at least £5,000. Six awards in total have been made to new students and four to ongoing students. Congratulations to all award-holders!

The full awards, with respective values, and project titles are as follows:

1 x University of Edinburgh Principal’s Career Development Award (UK/EU fees plus £14,000 maintenance for 3 years) * 'Walking as Feminist Practice and Artistic Strategy'
2 x AHRC PhD scholarship (UK/EU fees plus £13,590 maintenance and £200 foreign travel allowance per year for 3 years) * '(We Were Everywhere Except Where We Were Physically): Screen Cultures and Distraction in Contemporary Art' * 'Forging the Past: Fakery and Deception in Eighteenth-Century Cultures of Collecting'
1 x University of Edinburgh College of Humanities and Social Sciences 3-year studentship (UK/EU fees plus £12,000 maintenance and £500 research allowance for 3 years) * '6th-9th Century Insular Roman Reliquaries and Cultural Exchanges'
1 x University of Edinburgh College of Humanities and Social Sciences 1-year scholarship (UK/EU fees and £500 research allowance for 1 year; awarded to Masters student) * 'Photography and the Glasgow Boys'
1 x Edinburgh College of Art 1-year scholarship (£5,000 for one year; awarded to Masters student) * 'Photography and the Glasgow Boys'
5 x University of Edinburgh History of Art Postgraduate Awards awards: 1 x £15,000 (£5,000 per year for 3 years) *'One Night I, Sleeping, Had This Dream: The Iconography of the Roman de la Rose in the Context of Medieval Dream-Images and Literature' 4 x £5,000 for 1 year (awards made to ongoing PhD students) * 'Rewriting Art History: The Critical Historiographies of Feminism, 1970-2012' * 'The Vespucci Family: Patrons in Renaissance Italy' * 'The Qur'ans of the 11th Century: The Formation of a New Qur'anic Aesthetic' * 'Western Influences over the Gothic Architecture of Transylvania'

Graduate Research Seminars

Thursdays, 5:15pm, Lecture Room 1, Minto House (unless specified otherwise)

History of Art runs a weekly research seminar series, featuring presentations by members of History of Art and other subject areas, colleagues from other institutions, and visiting scholars.

The series kicks off in semester two with a seminar led by Professor Anne Wagner (University of York) on Some Drawings by Anthony McCall. The event takes place on Thursday Thursday 19th January.

Following this, weekly seminars are held every Thursday at 5:15pm in Lecture Room 1, Minto House, during both semesters.

Graduate Research Seminars are free and open to all. Drinks are served after each lecture in the Staff Common room.

The full schedule is available to download as a PDF, as is the schedule for the semester one series (now passed).

Wellcome Trust post-doctoral fellowship: Dr Edward Juler

Ed Juler, recipient of the Wellcome Trust post-doctoral fellowship award

Dr Edward Juler has just been awarded a three-year post-doctoral fellowship in the medical humanities by the Wellcome Trust, an award worth £137,467.

Entitled 'The Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and Anatomy', his project will examine the strange and beguiling representations of the human body created by Surrealist artists in Europe during the years c.1920-39 from the standpoint of anatomy and medical discourse.

The project is the result of a fruitful collaboration between History of Art and the Science Studies Unit and, while Ed will be based in ECA, he will be working closely alongside colleagues at the SSU.

Science Studies Unit (SSU), University of Edinburgh

AHRC Early Career Fellowship: Dr Christian Weikop

Dr Christian Weikop (Visiting Lecturer, History of Art) has been awarded an AHRC Early Career Fellowship to complete a Manchester University Press monograph,

Representations of the Peasant in German Art and Culture: Faces of the Volk.

ARTIST ROOMS Research Partnership

We are pleased to announce that the University of Edinburgh has been awarded a Research Partnership to work with Tate and National Galleries of Scotland on developing new research into the ARTIST ROOMS collection and its display.

There will be a rolling programme of scholarships, fellowships, other research projects and student internships advertised, to support this exciting venture.

Our research partner in this project is the Institute of Education (University of London).

Residency in Contemporary Art Theory and Curating

Launched in 2010-11 and taking place over one semester, the Residency in Contemporary Art Theory and Curating is offered by invitation to a scholar and/or curator whose body of work has contributed to advancing the field of contemporary art research.

We are pleased to announce the theorist and curator in residence for 2011-2012 is Sarah Cook.

Further information about the Residency in Contemporary Art Theory and Curating

Chinese Art: Translation, Adaptation and Modalities

University of Edinburgh, 27-28 October 2011

27 October, 5.15pm

28 October, 9.30am - 6.00pm

This conference on Chinese art and translation is inspired by the radically new journal Art in Translation (AIT) and its dual mission, which consists in challenging the boundaries of conventional art history as practiced in Europe and North America, and stimulating thinking about the problems and paradoxes of translation within the art historical discourse.

AIT has invited a number of distinguished scholars to address the role of translation within the specific linguistic realm and field of Chinese art history and visual culture.

Chinese Art: Translation, Adaptation and Modalities is the third event hosted by AIT which aims to locate translation in the visual arts within the broader discourse of translation studies and theory.

More information is available in the conference flyer. Registration is online via the events section of the Art in Translation web page.

The Umayyads conference

The international conference "The Umayyads: History, Art and Culture in the First Century of Islam" was jointly organised by Alain George (History of Art, Edinburgh) and Andrew Marsham (Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Edinburgh) in June 2011.

It brought together some of the latest scholarship on the formative period of Islam.

University of Edinburgh, 24 and 25 June 2011

The Umayyad conference website

Special Lecture by Professor Ito (Kyoto Institute of Technology)

Professor Toru Ito from the Kyoto Institute of Technology visited History of Art in Edinburgh as the only UK venue for his lecture tour of Europe. He presented a lecture on Monday 23rd May, entitled "Natsume Soseki and the fine arts: 'Kusamakura' as an imagery novel".

Donations were collected after the lecture for the Red Cross Japan Tsunami Fund.

The Trecento Seminar

Co-organised by Claudia Bolgia.

The first annual Trecento Seminar, on 'The Art of Justice', took place at the University of St Andrews, School of Art History, 79 North Street, on Friday, 6 May, 10-5.

Seminar poster

Paul Mellon fellowship

Martin Hammer has a Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Senior Fellowship this academic year, in order to research and write the book 'Francis Bacon: Images of Power'.

Martin Hammer also recently become a member of the Tate Britain Advisory Group, and gave a performance at the 'Performing Research: Art history not for Publication' conference at the Courtauld Institute of Art on 6 May 2011.

Further information about the performing research conference

Conference on Pre-Romanesque stones

Heather Pulliam organised a conference on 'Scotland and Beyond: Early Medieval Carved Stones' from March 31-April 2nd. The conference ran in conjunction with the National Museum of Scotland, and was sponsored by Henry Moore, National Museums of Scotland-Glenmorangie partnership, Historic Scotland, University of Edinburgh, Royal Society of Edinburgh and Society of Antiquaries Scotland.

Further information about the conference

Alain George awarded Philip Leverhulme Prize

This prize is 'awarded to outstanding scholars who have made a substantial and recognised contribution to their particular field of study, recognised at an international level, and where the expectation is that their greatest achievement is yet to come' (Leverhulme Trust). It will enable Alain George to undertake research projects on Islamic art and architecture in 2011-13, including a study of the Great Mosque of Damascus.

Monet exhibition success

The Monet exhibition at The Grand Palais in Paris, co-curated by Professor Richard Thomson, from September 22, 2010 to January 24, 2011 was seen by 913,064 people, making it the most successful exhibition of paintings ever staged in France.

There were also 2 million hits on the website, and the catalogue has so far sold 83,000 copies.

The Animated Documentary conference grant

Nea Ehrlich, PhD student in History of Art, has been awarded £5000 from the University Development and Alumni Small Project Grant award scheme to organise a conference about the emerging field of the animated documentary alongside a screening program of animated documentaries.

This article was published on Mar 29, 2013