Jon Cannon, ‘Patronal influence and corporate identity in English medieval church architecture’, supervised by Beth Williamson (History of Art) and James Clark (University of Exeter).

A longstanding teacher at the University, Jon will submit a PhD by Prior Publication which will draw together his existing academic publications. His interests lie in medieval architecture, patronage and meaning: in other words, how (and to what extent) buildings are shaped by the interests of patrons, and what they communicate as a result. His research focuses on cathedrals and west country churches.

Alys Cundy, ‘A century of re-invention: Display policy and practice at the Imperial War Museum’, a Collaborative Doctoral Award with the Imperial War Museum, London (IWM), supervised by Grace Brockington and Tim Cole at the University of Bristol, and Roger Tolson and Suzanne Bardgett at IWM.

The Imperial War Museum was founded in 1917 to record the First World War as it was still taking place.  For nearly a century since the museum has represented the conflicts of Britain and the Commonwealth. This CDA project charts the changing display policies and practices within the museum’s permanent London displays. For more about the collaboration with IWM, please see here.

Richard Fisher, ‘The culture of English cathedrals at the Dissolution’, supervised by Beth Williamson (History of Art) and James Clark (University of Exeter).

Henry VIII created six new cathedrals from dissolved abbeys. Before this, English cathedrals were administered by secular canons or Benedictine monks. By examination of the buildings and their contents, the people who ran them and their liturgical functions, Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester cathedrals are compared to see how they fared in the topsy-turvey world of Tudor religion.

Sophie Martin, ‘Edwardian Responses: Painting and the viewing experience through criticism and display 1895-1914', supervised by Grace Brockington (History of Art) and Stephen Cheeke (English).

This project explores how, through criticism, language, display, networks and visual imagery, a number of different approaches to viewing painting were concurrently narrated and promoted in Edwardian Britain. Key figures and sites include Walter Sickert, Roger Fry, Robert Ross, the Fitzroy Street Group, Carfax gallery, Allied Artists Association and the Contemporary Arts Society. 

Kyra Pollitt, ‘British sign language poetry as gesamtkunstwerk’, supervised by Simon Shaw-Miller (History of Art).

Looking beyond linguistic form, this study draws on Derridean Writing to examine visible, but mostly overlooked aspects of British Sign Language poetry. Such aspects include illumination (acts of drawing), gesture-dance, the cinematic, and pattern in composition. Sign language poetry is revealed as Signart - a practice of social sculpture.

Elizabeth Robles, ‘Disruptive aesthetics: Black British art since the 1980s', supervised by Dorothy Rowe (History of Art) and Siobhan Shilton (French).

This project reassesses artists who have been consumed by discourses of cultural theory and identity politics. It contributes to a new art history that maps the debate surrounding black British artists onto broader stories about British and twentieth-century art; and it traces an alternative iconography through an exploration of 'disruptive aesthetics'.

Wendy Sijnesael, ‘Between materiality and imagination: Alma-Tadema's engagement with his collection of source materials in depictions of antiquities and modern objects d'art', supervised by Shelley Hales (Classics and Ancient History) and Beth Williamson (History of Art).

This project entails a reassessment of the working methods of the Victorian painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) based on research of primary sources, most importantly his collection of photographs, drawings, tracings and prints, held in the Special Collections department of the University of Birmingham.

Megan Sleeper, 'Expressing the Earth: The Development of a Visual Language for Early  British Geological Sciences', supervised by Ronald Hutton (History).

From cartographic cataloguing of the earth’s surface, to the illustration of the fossil record and speculative depictions of prehistoric time, this thesis will explore the varied artistic representations of geological discovery during the nineteenth century and the role such artworks played in the promotion and establishment of the young science.

Madeleine Thiele, ‘The Pre-Raphaelite angel in the context of nineteenth-century Anglicanism’, supervised by Grace Brockington (History of Art) and Hester Jones (English).

The creation of an Anglican Angel was a Pre-Raphaelite solution to religious instability. Their representation of the angelic was an amalgam of private faith and artistic heritage. However, by the late 1870s the Pre-Raphaelite Angel became an androgynous creature. This project charts the process by which the angelic body became secular. 

Claudia Tobin, ‘The still life in modern art and literature in English’, funded by an AHRC studentship, supervised by Grace Brockington (History of Art) and Stephen Cheeke (English).

This interdisciplinary study of the still life explores the aesthetics of vibration, colour and the rhythms of attention across different media in the early to mid-twentieth century. Claudia Tobin also works on various curatorial projects, and is research assistant for the forthcoming Virginia Woolf exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London. In 2013, she held an AHRC International Placement Scheme Fellowship at the Huntington Library, California.

David Trigg, ‘Art Books for the People: The Penguin Modern Painters 1944-1959’, funded by an AHRC studentship, supervised by Grace Brockington (History of Art) and Stephen Cheeke (English).

The Penguin Modern Painters (1944-59) was an affordable, paperback series which presented the work of modern British artists to a popular audience. This interdisciplinary study examines its cultural significance, focusing on the wartime relationship between publishers and the state, and the disparate modes of art writing that the series generated.

Lucian Waugh, ‘Representations of empowered women between 1885 and 1903: Reappraising the reception of historical myth in late Victorian England’, funded by an AHRC studentship, supervised by Grace Brockington (History of Art) and James Thompson (History).

This project investigates female agency in late Victorian art, as a visual response to our real and imagined past. It considers how such agency shapes our understanding of classicism, eroticism, medievalism and paganism in the period. As a methodological experiment, it employs work by female and male artists on an equal basis.

Holly Williamson, ‘The life and work of Lucy Lee Robbins (1865-1943)’, supervised by Dorothy Rowe (History of Art) and Ed Lilley (History of Art).

Lucy Lee-Robbins is almost unknown today, but she was one of the very few women artists to paint and exhibit female nudes in the late nineteenth century. This project seeks to establish what she achieved in her art, and how it relates to that of her better-known contemporaries.