Art History
We are a wide-ranging group of researchers, across art, architecture, visual culture and design history. With a strong commitment to interdisciplinary research, an open and inclusive approach, we like to find new ways of looking at the past and making connections with the present.
We run a highly successful MA in Art History, from which we recruit many of our PhD students. Our interests range from prehistory to the present, taking in rock art, Byzantine icons, the Ottoman Empire, Renaissance and early modern Italy, the Netherlands, Britain and Scandinavia, eighteenth-century France and then the burst of global connections sustained across the modern world to the present day.
In all periods, we emphasize our commitment to reflecting on power relations, mainly through attending processes of colonisation and post-colonisation. We carry this into our active scholarship on questions of equality, diversity and inclusion in art, architecture and design today.
Key facts
- We attract funding for PhD study from the AHRC via Open-Oxford Cambridge Consortium (OCC). We also create opportunities for doctoral partnerships, including with heritage bodies (the National Trust at Ham House, Surrey) and with archives on the designer William Morris with the Sanderson Archive.
- Part-time research students are fully integrated into the art history research culture, with the opportunity to participate in work-in-progress days and other events.
- The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 results showed 76 per cent of our research is world leading or internationally excellent, while our impact and Research Environment was ranked as 100% world leading or internationally excellent.
- Doctoral students run a peer support network and are also encouraged to join research groups based in the Department including Open Ecologies; and Objects, Collections and Museums.
- Our staff have been successful in obtaining awards and fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Society of Architectural Historians, the Design History Society, the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art and other organisations.
- We also participate in interdisciplinary research groups in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences such as the Medieval and Early Modern Research Group, Gender and Otherness in the Humanities (GoTH) and the Digital Humanities Research Group.
Career prospects
Many of our PhD students pursue their research after completing their doctorate, with outcomes including publications and working across academia and the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums). Several students on the Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Programme have been successful in obtaining placements with heritage bodies during their studies via the DTP.
Location
Most of our full-time research students are based at our Milton Keynes campus; for details of residence requirements for different modes of study see Full-time study and Part-time study.
Links
Pursuing a research degree in Art History at the OU has been very rewarding. Throughout my time as a research student at the OU, I have benefitted from high-quality supervision and the wide range of training on offer. A mixture of in-person and online seminars and conferences organised by the lively and nurturing art history department have provided me with valuable opportunities to develop skills and knowledge.
Katherine AultPhD Student, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
Embarking on a collaborative PhD at the OU has allowed me to work with scholars beyond my immediate field. Beyond this, the OU's generous research grant has allowed me to follow my research in archives in Scotland and across England and contributed to a visiting fellowship to the Peabody Essex Museum in the US, which has been foundational to my thinking.
Kerry-Louise AppsPhD Student, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences