Art History
We are a wide-ranging group of researchers, across art, architecture and design history. With a strong commitment to interdisciplinary research, an open and inclusive approach to methods and theory, 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 breadth of interests move between rock art in prehistory, to the eastern Mediterranean and the Ottoman empire, onwards around northern Europe and Italy in the Renaissance, eighteenth-century France and then the burst of global connections sustained across the modern world to the present.
In all periods, we emphasize our commitment to reflecting on power relations, particularly through 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 OOC (Open-Oxford-Cambridge) consortium.
- We create opportunities for doctoral partnerships, including the National Trust at Ham House, and a new look at William Morris with the Sanderson Archive.
- Part-time research students are fully integrated into the art history research environment, 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.
- The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 ranked our impact and Research Environment as 100% world leading or internationally excellent.
- Doctoral students are encouraged to join 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.
- Our staff have been successful in obtaining awards and fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the European Science Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, the Alexander K. Humboldt Foundation, 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.
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.
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