Research students play a large part in the life of the School of Humanities. Currently around 40 students are attached to the four programmes in the School, each pursuing an individual research project. Together, they form a lively community of writers and thinkers with close relations with the artists and designers studying in other parts of the RCA, often sharing skills and interests by organising symposia and exhibitions. The School also has a good track record of securing AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards and currently has students working in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum.

Students join the programme to undertake original research and to write a thesis (c. 40,000 words for an MPhil and 80,000 words for a PhD). They can be registered as full time or as part time.

Like all good researchers, our students produce new ways of thinking about and understanding the world. Many have gone on to publish their research and to establish significant careers in the arts. The best research should not only set out to interpret the world but also to change it.

Our teaching faculty includes prominent art and design historians, critics, curators and philosophers. Most combine teaching and research with careers as writers and curators. The School can provide expert supervision across the spectrum of art and design history and criticism. We are also keen to support interdisciplinary work and so we have close relations with expert advisors in other universities. We are partners in a number of major international research projects such as MeLa ‘European Museums and Libraries in/of the Age of Migrations’, a four-year research project funded by the European Commission.

Like all good university departments, we also specialise in a number of areas:

The Curating Contemporary Art programme, a pioneering development established in 1992, is home to a number of research students focusing on transnational curating as well as the history and theory of curating.

The History of Design programme – taught in conjunction with the Victoria and Albert Museum – has been a leading centre for the study of the history of design for almost 30 years. Research students pursue the meanings of designed objects, spaces and images within the context of manufacture, mediation and consumption in any national or international context and historical period after 1400.

Research students in the Critical Writing in Art & Design programme examine different faces of the history and current practice of art and design as well as formulations of critical theory. Our students also produce critical examinations of ‘experimental’ or novel writing practices.

The Critical & Historical Studies programme offers opportunities to research into the history and contemporary practice of art, architecture and design. The programme particularly encourages practitioners whose wish to write a thesis that takes them beyond the specificities of a particular discipline.

We welcome applications in these areas of expertise, as well as more general enquiries about the possibility of postgraduate study in the fields of the Humanities taught in the School.

Professor David Crowley
Research Leader, School of Humanities
Head of Programme, Critical Writing in Art & Design
humanities-research@rca.ac.uk