Course description
Staff research areas
Current research areas include: medieval architecture; Italian late medieval and Renaissance art and patronage; seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English architecture; nineteenth-century British art; the colonial encounter and cultural history in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; museology; nationalism and ethnicity in contemporary visual culture; visual culture in South Africa; nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture and design in France and England; aspects of gender and visual culture; art and design in fin-de-siècle Vienna; art and music; computer applications for art history; digital media and critical theory.
Study resources
The quality of teaching and support in the School was endorsed by a government quality assessment in which we received the highest marks possible in all of the six categories assessed. In the last Research Assessment Exercise the School increased its rating from 4 to 5.
You will have access to outstanding technical research support and facilities. The Centre for Film and Visual Media Research opened in 2007 in the College's buildings in Gordon Square. It has a 75-seat auditorium with full digital projection and 16mm and 35mm facilities, plus a viewing room with PCs for editing and converting materials from analogue formats and five viewing stations for VHS and DVD. The School also has an excellent historic slide library and is developing digital systems for its slide and film collections. A range of advanced technical resources is also available in theVasari multimedia research lab.
Birkbeck's location in Bloomsbury offers excellent access to specialist libraries in the University of London, including the University of London Library, the Institute for Historical Research, the Warburg Institute, the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the major national resource of the British Library. You will also have easy access to specialist art libraries not far from Birkbeck, including the library of the Courtauld Institute of Art, the British Architectural Library and the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). The great visual resources of the British Museum, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Gallery and the V&A, commercial galleries and salesrooms, and temporary exhibition galleries like the Barbican Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Hayward Gallery and the Royal Academy also make London a particularly good place in which to undertake research.
The School has a lively postgraduate culture, and students meet regularly to participate in reading groups, writing groups and special research skills seminars. There is an annual research forum, where professionals in related fields share their expertise. The School also runs a postgraduate seminar series, where internationally renowned scholars present current research.
Special features
The School uniquely combines postgraduate taught programmes in history of art and design, digital art history, and film and visual media. It offers an exciting environment for interdisciplinary research.
