MPhil/PhD Curatorial/Knowledge

3-4 years full-time or 4-6 years part-time

Course overview
This programme is aimed at researchers who are already working in the curatorial field and are interested in theorising their practice.

The project of Curatorial/Knowledge is simultaneously a teaching programme for postgraduate research and a mechanism for bringing together the experiences of working within art institutions and environments with modes of theoretical reflection and analysis being explored within the university. Both forums urgently require a complex mode of dialogue and exchange with one another, one in which experience and reflection can come together. As the boundaries between theory and practice continue to erode, we all feel the need to explore how these might come together beyond context or illustration.

The area of inquiry explored by this degree is ‘the curatorial’ as differentiated from ‘curating’. One of the main reasons to differentiate between these two concepts is in order to open up a space of theoretical reflection and speculation consistently missing within the ever-increasing activity of curating and its professionalisation. The conjunction of the title ‘Curatorial/Knowledge’ implies an understanding of curating as the production of and engagement with knowledge. Thus ‘knowing’ is not the absorption of information and materials, and neither simply analysis and interpretation, but rather something we actively produce through our various practices.

Students come together six times a year for intense three-day seminars, typically involving whole days with international guest speakers, presentations of research conducted by the programme's participants, and 'reading group' sessions engaging in textual analysis and methodological considerations.