Fine Art

The Fine Art Practices Research Group, located within De Montfort University’s Institute of Art and Design, is an innovative, rigorous and dynamic interdisciplinary academic team of art practitioners, historians and theoreticians. 

  • Expertise within the group is extensive and stems from the individual academic’s direct professional experience of operating within the contemporary art world in combination with a cultural, historical, philosophical and political awareness that underpins all aspects of their research specialisms. We have strengths in photography, painting, sculpture, moving image and printmaking; and expertise in art theory, art history, the contemporary art world, curation, visual culture, fine art research by practice, art and feminism, social value and wellbeing, contemporary Indian, East Asian and South-East Asian art, art and the working class avant-garde, and the making of meaning in material practice. 

Fine Art Practices Research at De Montfort University invites applications to the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership from UK and EU students. Members of the group and their research interests are listed below: 

Professor Christine White – christine.white@dmu.ac.uk
Deputy Dean, Faculty of Arts, Design and Humanities
Art and science, the arts and wellbeing, performance, design for live and recorded performance 

Dr Carina Brand – carina.brand@dmu.ac.uk
Art theory, art history, political economy, feminism, globalisation, Marxism

Louise Clarke – lclarke@dmu.ac.uk
Historical and contemporary drawing and print, fine art practices, xenotopia, utopia, architecture, psychology of space, primal landscape, installation, fiction, cultural commentary, drawing as language, drawing in education, communication and learning through drawing 

Anna Lucas – alucas@dmu.ac.uk
Lens-based media, artists’ moving image, use of the camera and editing process as tools for research, visual perception, diegetic sound, the documentary form in relation to human interaction with landscape, learning institutions, amateur expertise, non-verbal communication and learning

Edward Rennie – ERennie@dmu.ac.uk
Painting, the relationship between photography and painting, narrative in and across both media, photography as a means of recording place and location, ‘empty’ or found space, industrial or abandoned landscape

Jamie Scott – JDScott@dmu.ac.uk
Contemporary fine art practice, contemporary Indian art, curation, installation, painting, lens and digital media

Ruth Sumner – rsumner@dmu.ac.uk
Fine art education, fine art practices, painting

Dr Ming Turner – mturner@dmu.ac.uk
Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Art, curation, art management, visual culture, post-colonialism, feminism

To apply or to find out more about the application process, click here.