About

I am an academic and artist. I work internationally and regularly collaborate with artists, civil servants, academics and administrators to realise art, advocacy and social research projects. My work spans galleries, architecture and the public realm. I have realised over 105 exhibitions or public artworks, 40 publications and 75 papers and public lectures in the UK, North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia. In recent years I have been working to develop multidisciplinary interventions within visual arts, theatre and policy. My work is diverse and at times playful, but it is consistently informed by research and an analysis of its role within the shared social and physical space that it inhabits. In addition to commissioned artworks and interventions, I have collaborated with architects, engineers and masterplanners on strategic projects in British Cities and been involved in debates, exhibitions and events concerning the challenges of urban design, experience and policy in England, China and the US. Since 2007, I have also worked within conflicted landscapes and considered the ethical and practical challenges of humanitarian and military engagement at sites of tension around the world including Palestine, Tunisia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other regional contexts. I am the co-founder of Empathy & Risk C.I.C. This project, supported by the Global Challenge Research Fund, fosters arts-led projects considering the staged challenges to empathy that occur long prior to the descent into the polarised engagement of military forces. Empathy & Risk brings together and encourages dialogue between a wide international network of academics, research centres, INGOs, practitioners and projects. I have held academic posts within the UK since 2000. I was first awarded a personal chair in 2008, was the recipient of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for research in 2010 and was appointed Director of Research and Development at the University of Brighton in 2016. Since 2018 I have held the post of Research Professor at Sheffield Hallam University and am currently Director of the Culture and Creativity Research Institute.

Teaching

College of Social Sciences and Arts

Subject Area

Fine Art

Research

• Art and Design Research Centre
• Culture and Creativity Research Institute

Current Projects

Empathy and Risk. This is a research project, which has evolved to incorporate field-research, advocacy, academic forums, policy development and proposals for curatorial frameworks. It is a continuation and development of the earlier research and impact activities of the War and Medicine project. The research is focussed on exploring the methodological challenges to empathetic engagement that may exist within international military and development policy, implementation and analysis.

Featured Projects

https://www.empathyandrisk.com/
https://www.cotterrell.com/
https://impact.ref.ac.uk/casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?Id=4980

Collaborators and Sponsors

Global Challenge Research Fund, British Council, Arts Council England.

Publications

Postgraduate supervision

Urban development, spatial design and cultural planning: Building on a history of engagement with masterplanning and post-industrial urbanism, I support research considering the relationship between architecture, urban design and societal change; Data and Power : I research and supervise students exploring the relationship between privacy and authority, macrosystems and individual agency, complexity and subjectivity within representation of behaviour; War and Polarisation: I am actively engaged in research that considers the relationship between international policy and regional situations of crisis and conflict.