Researchers

Below is a list of current PhD students working in the field of British art. Please note that this list is a work in progress and is in no way exhaustive at this time. If you are a PhD student currently working on British art and would like your topic to appear on this page please get in touch – you can either leave a comment below, or alternatively email us at histart-bars@york.ac.uk.  If you would like to have a contact email displayed alongside your name and topic please email us the relevant information.

University of Aberdeen

• Fern Insh (f.insh@abdn.ac.uk) – Scottish Visual Culture in the Early Modern Era
• Madeline Ward (mward@abdn.ac.uk) - The Reception of Titian’s Paintings in Seventeenth-Century Britain

University of Berne, Switzerland

• Simone Streibich (simone.streibich@ikg.unibe.ch) – Constructions of the feminine interior. Woman as Vestals of the Domestic Interior in Victorian Painting

University of Birmingham

• Emily Porter Salmon
 - David Hockney in the 1960s and Homosexuality
• Richenda Roberts
 - Responses to World War One by artists based solely in Britain throughout the duration of the conflict. 
(Key areas of research: events affecting or more likely pertaining to civilians such as bereavement, the role of women, the role of both genders in the promotion/negation war, military raids, food shortages and pacifism. Also the contemporaneous reception of such artworks.)
• Sue Tungate – 
Matthew Boulton: Visual and Material Cultures of Industrialisation Thesis title: Coins, Medals and Tokens of Matthew Boulton’s Mints.
• Connie Wan - The drawings of the Birmingham-based artist Samuel Lines’ and his sons

University of Brighton

• Ruth Cribb (ruthcribb@hotmail.com) – Workshop traditions and the making of sculpture in the early twentieth century: authorship and collaboration in the work of Eric Gill, 1909 to 1940

University of Bristol

• Jon Cannon – English Medieval Church Architecture
• Emma Cowan – Victorian Design at Tyntesfield
• Lydia Edwards – Historical Realism in the Costume of Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s Productions 1898-1912
• Rachel Flynn – The Artist as Archivist: The Graham and Kathleen Sutherland Foundation 1976-1989
• Cora Gilroy-Ware – The Classical Nude in Romantic Britain
• Colin Glen – The Artwork and Its Photographic Documentation
• Catherine Hunt – The Depiction of Gloves c. 1400-1660
• Joanna Karlgaard – Frederick Sandys and Victorian Illustration
• Eunmin Lim – Murray Marks, Chinese porcelain, and Renaissance bronzes
• Elizabeth Robles – Costumes and Masks in Contemporary British Diasporic Art
• Laurence Shafe – Charles Darwin and the Aesthetic Movement
• Wendy Sijnesael – Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Use of Antiquities
• Megan Sleeper – Victorian art and science
• Jennifer Spiers – Laura Knight
• Peter Stilton – British Art 1957-1969: Science under the Spectre of Hiroshima and Sputnik
• Claire Yearwood – The Mirror in Nineteenth-Century British Art

University of Cambridge

• Frank Albo - The Influence of Freemasonry on British Theories of Gothic Architecture and the Rise of the Architectural Profession 1833-1883
• Susannah Brooke – Private Art Collections and London Town Houses, 1780-1830
• Loyd Grossman - Divided Selves: Benjamin West, his followers and the struggle to be modern
• Louise Hardiman - British Engagement with the Russian Decorative Arts, 1890-1930: the roles of Netta Peacock and Elizabeth Polunin
• Verity Ibbotson - Gerald Horsley and the Arts & Crafts Movement
• Chloe Kroeter - Art and Activism: Promoting Change through British Periodical Illustrations, 1893-1913
• William Kynan-Wilson - Images of Rome in Medieval England circa 1100-1300
• Alastair Meredith - British Mural Painting in the Early 20th Century
• John Munns - The Cross of Christ and Anglo-Norman Religious Imagination
• Temi- Tope Odumosu - Iconographies of African People in 18th and 19th century English Satirical Prints
• Mike Ramirez - The London Churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor
• Sheila Russell - English Contemporary Dress in Late-Seventeenth Century Art
• Abbie N. Sprague - Painting in the Arts and Crafts Movement
• Fanny Singer - A Historical Analysis of the Interplay of Photography and Printmaking with a Particular Focus on the work of Richard Hamilton
• Laura Slater - Art and Political Discourse in Medieval England c.1159-1422
• Lauren Weinberg - The Cult of Celebrity in the works of Man Ray and Cecil Beaton

The Courtauld Institute of Art

• Clare Backhouse -
Early Modern Dress in the Pepys Ballad Collection.
• Michael Carter – Cistercian Art and Architecture in Northern England during the Late Middle Ages
• Helen Draper, Mary Beale (1633-1699) and her ‘payting roome’ in Restoration London, being a study of the artist, her circle and her place in the context of Restoration art, literature and commerce
• Samuel Elmer – Middle-Class Modernism: Institutional Change in the English Modern Art World, 1918-1933
• Fiona Gaskin – The Contours of Identity: English Landscape Painting in the Cold War, 1945-1963
• Carey Gibbons, Victorian Illustration: Arthur Hughes and Frederick Sandys
• Heather Gilderdale – The Painted Glass of Great Malvern Priory (Worc.) c.1440-1500
• Keren Hammerschlag -
 Aesthetics and Violence in the Art of Frederic Leighton
• Robert Hradsky  – The Architecture of the Inns of Court, c.1660–c.1830
• Lucetta Johnson – The Symbolism of Hair in Nineteenth-century British Art
• Ayla Lepine – Sacred Beauty: G. F. Bodley’s Designs for Oxford and Cambridge, 1861-1905
• Karen Lundgren – The Elaborate Romanesque Carving of the Yorkshire School of Sculpture
• Emily 
Mann -
 British Imperial Architecture in the 17th and early 18th Centuries
• Charlotte de Mille – Bergson in Britain c. 1890-1914
• Philippa 
Potts -
 The Influence of British Ambassadors on National Gardens in the 17th Century
• Heather Rawlin-Cushing – Attitudes Towards Death and the Body in Anglo-Saxon Art
• Sam Rose – ‘Farewell to Formalism’: English Art Writing After Roger Fry
• Jane Spooner -
 English Royal Wall Painting in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century

Dublin City University

• Lisa Cotter (lisacotter@gmail.com) – Church Art and Architecture: Stained Glass Windows within Chruch Settings (MA by research)

University of East Anglia

• Katherine Aspinall – A Compass in the Eye: Epistemologies of Drawing in 1940s and 1950s British Art
• Katherine Hudson – Satire in British Art of the 1920s
• Greg Salter (G.Salter@uea.ac.uk) – Masculinity, Domesticity and the Self in British Painting in the 1950s
• Rosanna Eckersley (r.eckersley@uea.ac.uk) – Art, Religion and Spirituality: Winifred Knights (1899-1947)

University of Edinburgh

• Francesca Baseby (http://writingwarpandweft.blogspot.com) – Artist-Designers & Dovecot Studios in the Post War Period
• Heather Carroll (H.N.Carroll@sms.ed.ac.uk) – Prima Donnas of the Political Stage: Visual Representations of the Eighteenth-century Political Hostess
• Bryony Coombs (B.J. Coombs@sms.ed.ac.uk) – “Distantia Jungit”: Scots Patronage of the Visual Arts in France, c.1455-c.1545
• Kitty Corbet-Milward – Imagery of the changing roles of Norwegian Women Between 1880 and 1913.
• Tasha Gefreh – Pictish Figurative Iconography
• Freya Gowrley – The Female Engagement with Classical Antiquity in the Long Eighteenth Century
• Elysse Meredith (e.t.meredith@sms.ed.ac.uk) – The Costumes of Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-century Manuscript Illumination and their Use in Arthurian Literature
• Jeong-yon Ha (J.Ha@ed.ac.uk) – Visualising the Lower Thames: Aspects of Modernity and the Empire, 1880-1910

University of Glasgow

• Elisebetta Toreno - The Semiotics of Politics and Psychology in 15th and 16th-century Western Female Portraiture from the Perspective of Patrons/Patronage
  
• Susannah Thompson - Art Writing in Scotland 1980-present
• Emily Taylor - Fashionable Dress in 18th-century Scotland: the Stylistic Connections with France and England, 1760-1800
• Klaudia Szalay - The Nagybanya Art Colony and the Glasgow School
• Rachel Stuart - Rosslyn Chapel: Imagination and Spirituality in Medieval Scotland
• Rebecca Gordon - Replace, Reinstall, Restore: a Reconsideration of Material Authenticity in Contemporary Art in Scotland
• Konstanze Knittler - Motivations and Patterns of Collecting: The Collecting of Chinese ceramics in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in Britain
• Sylviane Dubois-Lombard – Images of Glasgow through texts relating to painting collections from the Enlightenment until 1990

Independent Researchers

• Sarah Crellin – The Sculpture of Charles Wheeler’ just published by Lund Humphries in association with the Henry Moore Foundation; 20th Century British Sculpture

Kings College London

• Tom Overton (thomas.overton@kcl.ac.uk) – Art and Property Now: The British Library’s John Berger Archive; see also http://www.britishcouncil.org/venicebiennale for the project The British Council at the Venice Biennale, 1930-

University of Leicester

• Marion Martin - J. M. W. Turner and German Romanticism
• Andrew Thomas Croft - The Early Career of Michael Balcon and the Development of Inter-War British Cinema
• Miriam Cady - Ruins of the British Country House

University of Manchester

• Naomi Billingsley (naomi.billingsley@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk), The Visual Christology of William Blake; see https://doubtdespairparadise.wordpress.com/ and http://www.presidentsaward.manchester.ac.uk/current/facultyofhumanities/naomibillingsley/
• Carol Huston (carol.huston@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk), J G Ballard and Eduardo Paolozzi, c.1965-1990

National University of Ireland

• Neassa Doherty, Mezzotint Printmaking by the Dublin Group (c.1740-1775) and their Activity Within the London Art Scene

University of Oxford

• Kate Barush - ‘Every Age is a Canterbury Pilgrimage’: art and the sacred journey in Britain, 1790 – 1850
  
• Nathan Flis - From the Life: the art of Francis Barlow (c.1626-1704)
• David Lewis - The Architecture of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott
• Michael Ripps - The London picture trade and Dutch old masters: dealers and collectors, 1865-1914

Oxford Brooks

• Nancy Langham, “The Splendour and Beauty of Truth”: John Rogers Herbert, R.A. (1810-1890)

University of Plymouth

• Nikki Frater (nikki@nikkifrater.co.uk) – Rex Whistler (1904 – 1944): A New Approach

University of York:

• Jasmine Allen – Stained Glass and the World Exhibitions c. 1951-1900
• Beatrice Bertram – William Etty and the Royal Academy
• Kaitlin Blackwell – John Collet (ca. 1725-1780) and Pictorial Satire in England, 1760-1780
• Meg Boulton – (Re)Building Jerusalem: considering the construction and employment of conceptual space in Anglo-Saxon England by the early church in the sixth-ninth centuries
• Kirsty Breedon - Sculpture in the Circum-Atlantic World: Herbert Ward
• Kirstin Donaldson – The Journal ‘Experiment’ and British Surrealism
• Caroline Good  - (cag508@york.ac.uk) Lovers of Art: English writers on painting and the narratives of nation, 1658-1719 (Part of the AHRC funded project ‘Court, country, city: British art 1660-1735′)
• Sam Hancock - ‘A new theatre of prospects’: Eighteenth-century British Painters and Artistic Mobility
• Rosanna Harrison - The fan in eighteenth-century England
• James Jago – Court, Capital, Province: The Reassessment and Exemplars of Private Religious Space in Early Modern England, 1600-1640
• Lucinda Lax - Edward Penny, Exhibition Culture and the Rise of Genre Painting in Eighteenth-Century England
• James Legard – Vanbrugh, Blenheim Palace, and the Meanings of Baroque Architecture
• Arlene Leis - Sarah Sophia Banks: femininity, sociability and the practice of collecting in late eighteenth-century England
• Emily Moore - John Singer Sargent’s Portraits, c.1890-1914
• Peter Moore – Graphic Art and Empire: British Visual Culture in the Atlantic World, 1660-1735 (Part of the AHRC funded project ‘Court, country, city: British art 1660-1735′)
• Rhys Morgan - Barbara Hepworth
• Ian Neal- Representations of Reverie: Rossetti, Whistler, Clausen
• Jackie Riding - Joseph Highmore (1692-1780)
• Sam Shaw - The Art Galleries of London 1890-1930
• Catherine Spencer (ces528@york.ac.uk) - The ‘Lesson of Anthropology’ for British and American Art, 1950-70
• Harold Stirrup – The Artists at Work in Some Twelfth-Century English Manuscripts
• Robert Sutton – Henry Moore: Sculpture and Media in Twentieth-Century Britain
• Philippa Turner – Image and Devotion in Late Medieval English Cathedrals
• Katie Tyreman - Visualizing: Victorian Women Artists
• Emma Watts - British Art in Australia 1860 – 1930
• Sean Willcock  (sw535@york.ac.uk) – Art and Unrest in the British Empire, c.1855-1880
• Gabriel Williams – Sculpture and the International Exhibitions (part of the AHRC Displaying Victorian Sculpture collaborative research project)

University of Warwick:

• Carley Collier – The Re-Evaluation of Medieval and Early-Renaissance Italian art in British Taste during the Long Eighteenth Century: creators, collectors, critics and “gothic atrocities”
• Alice Eden – Representations of Women and Forms of Knowledge in British Painting, 1880-1920
• Eoin Martin – Victoria & Albert and Sculpture

Yale University:

• Anna Arabindan-Kesson – Threads of Empire: Art and the Cotton Trade in the Indian and Atlantic Ocean Worlds, 1840-1900. Advisors: Tim Barringer and Hazel Carby, History of Art, African American Studies departments
• Meredith Gamer – Criminal and martyr: Art and religion in Britain’s early modern eighteenth century

University of Southampton:

• Judith Walsh – Jack Smith, John Berger and the kitchen sink aesthetic jw2f10@soton.ac.uk