There is a very active community of researchers at The Courtauld who specialise in art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Undergraduates and MAs are encouraged to join current (and often former) PhDs at the regular meetings of the Modern and Contemporary Research Seminars, which attract distinguished scholars in London and beyond. Public lectures with acclaimed visiting speakers are regularly organised, and the Courtauld organises and hosts colloquia and large-scale conferences in connection with events such as exhibitions.
MA students write their dissertations either on material arising directly from their course or, with their supervisor’s approval, on any other viable topic. The best dissertations achieve publishable standard in leading journals.
With the range of interests and expertise of the staff, and the availability of research resources in London, research students are encouraged to undertake pioneering work in a range of areas of art history. The large number of active research students in the modern and contemporary area creates a supportive and stimulating environment.
Research
There is a very active community of researchers. Undergraduates and MAs are encouraged to join current (and often former) PhDs at the regular meetings of the Modern and Contemporary Research Seminars, which attract distinguished scholars in London and beyond. Public lectures with acclaimed visiting speakers are regularly organised, and the Courtauld organises and hosts colloquia and large-scale conferences in connection with events such as exhibitions.
MA students write their dissertations either on material arising directly from their course or, with their supervisor’s approval, on any other viable topic. The best dissertations achieve publishable standard in leading journals.
With the range of interests and expertise of the staff, and the availability of research resources in London, research students are encouraged to undertake pioneering work in a range of areas of art history. The large number of active research students in the modern and contemporary area creates a supportive and stimulating environment.
Many PhDs will be published in whole or in part, substantially revised or in some cases substantially as submitted.
Modern and Contemporary Faculty
Professor Jo Applin
Professor in the History of Art; Head of History of Art Department
Rebecca Arnold
Senior Lecturer in History of Dress & Textiles
Professor Caroline Arscott
Professor of 19th-century British Art
Sussan Babaie
Professor in the Arts of Iran and Islam
Professor David Peters Corbett
Professor of American Art and Director of the Centre for American Art
Dr Klara Kemp-Welch
Reader in 20th Century Modernism; Head of MA History of Art
Professor Gavin Parkinson
Professor in Modern Art
Dr Robin Schuldenfrei
Tangen Reader in 20th-century Modernism (on research leave, Henkel Stiftung)
Professor Julian Stallabrass
Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art
Dr Wenny Teo
Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art; Head of Admissions
Professor Sarah Wilson
Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art
Associate Lecturers
Research Fellows
Currently the ‘modern and contemporary faculty’ also consists of:
Visiting Professors
Professor Christopher Green
Professor John Milner
Professor Anne Wagner
Honorary Research Fellow
Dr Shulamith Behr
Andrew W Mellon Foundation / Research Forum Visiting Professor (Mellon MA)
Dr Heather Norris Nicholson
Andrew W Mellon Foundation / Research Forum Postdoctoral Fellow (Mellon MA)
Dr Sarah Beth Levavy
Terra Foundation for American Art Visiting Professor
Dr Julia Bryan-Wilson
Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow:
Dr Ellery Foutch
Recent Teaching in Modern and Contemporary
MA
- The Male Body in Nineteenth-Century European Art
Taught by: Dr Satish Padiyar - The Aesthetic Body: Science, Aestheticism and the Image of the Body in British Art 1860-1900
Taught by: Professor Caroline Arscott and Dr Carol Jacobi - Modernism After Postmodernism: Modern Art and its Interpretation
Taught by: Dr Gavin Parkinson - Contacts and Contexts in Russian Art c. 1905-1945
Taught by: Professor John Milner - Dress, Body, Space and Modernity: Fashion in the City, 1919-1939
(MA in the History of Dress)
Taught by: Dr Rebecca Arnold - German Art and Cultural Politics (The 1930s-1950s): Inner Emigration, Exile and Remigration
Taught by: Dr Shulamith Behr - Art and Psychoanalysis: Fifty Years of War in the Time of Peace
Taught by: Professor Mignon Nixon with Professor Juliet Mitchell - Aestheticising Politics? The Political in Globalised Contemporary Art
Taught by: Dr Julian Stallabrass - Global Conceptualism: The Last Avant-Garde or a New Beginning? Andrew W. Mellon Foundation MA 2010-11
Taught by: Professor Sarah Wilson - Art, Artists and 20th Century Modernism in Europe: Works, Contexts, Meanings
Taught by: Professor Christopher Green