Social History of Art MA

The study of the history of art at Leeds has an international reputation for its innovative, rigorous, diverse and critically engaged approaches. Previously called MA History of Art, the name was changed in 2018 to highlight the established strengths of this course with its emphasis on social and political approaches to art history.

The MA in the Social History of Art builds on a unique legacy of dynamic and challenging scholarship, and continues to test the parameters of the discipline and shape wider debates in the field.

Around a shared commitment to understanding art as central to the production and reproduction of the social worlds we inhabit, our key research strengths lie in feminist, gender and Jewish studies, on questions of materialism and materiality, the postcolonial and the ‘non-Western’, as well as in provocations of those fields of art history considered more ‘established’, from Medieval and Renaissance up to the contemporary.

Drawing on the School’s community of researchers, and with our links to internationally important research institutions such as the Henry Moore Institute, as well as with an abundant and growing array of arts institutions in Leeds and nearby, this course will equip you to develop your own critically informed research.