University of the West of England

Faculty Member, Arts, Creative Industries and Education (ACIE)

RWA Professor of Fine Arts

About

On September 2010 I took up the post of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at UWE, Bristol.

Before that role, I had university-wide responsibilities as Pro VC for Research and Development (including RAE / REF, research bidding);  Business Engagement (including links with industry; enterprise; incubation; science park, Science City); Public Engagement and Community Engagement; Graduate studies, PGR and CPD, Work-Based Learning and the Shell Award Framework. I am the UWE lead for regional relationships, in such areas as HEIF, ECIF, ERDF. I have executive oversight of four Institutes – Bristol Robotics Lab (with University of Bristol); Institute for Bio-Sensing Technology; Institute for Sustainability, Health and Environment; Countryside and Community Research Institute (with Hartpury College, Royal Agricultural College and University of Gloucestershire). I am currently Director of the UWE professional support service, Research, Business and Innovation (RBI) with some 60 staff.

For ten years I was Executive Dean of the Faculty of Creative Arts, the RWA Professor of Fine Arts, and a founding Director of the UWE Research Centre PLaCe. My research interests lie in the processes and iconography of commemoration, the visual culture of the Great War, and the representation of peace and conflict in the 20th/21st century.  As a painter, I have exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, and I am represented in the permanent collection of the Imperial War Museum, London, the Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, the National War Memorial, New Zealand. My most recent exhibitions have been in Melbourne, Australia, London, and Wellington, New Zealand.

I am an experienced presenter of conference papers, having addressed conferences in UK, Europe, North America and South-East Asia. My published work covers art history, cultural geography, material culture and recent journal papers have examined the contested memorial spaces of cities in England after World War One, the design of commemorative parks in northern France [supported by Canadian government grants], the rhetoric of peace [for which I was awarded an AHRC grant to examine peace gardens in 2006] and the articulation of organisational memory through landscape design. I completed a monograph on the British painter Stanley Spencer in 2007, and a new book ‘A Terrible Beauty: British Artists in the First World War was published in 2010. Over forty research papers and abstracts can be seen on www.vortex.uwe.ac.uk/

In ten years as a television presenter, researcher and associate producer I worked for ITV, BBC and C4 on a wide range of programmes from dance to drama, poetry to painting, including the award winning documentary Redundant Warrior, about the photographer Don McCullin. In addition to occasional work on BBC radio, I have a credit for ‘design research’ in the animated feature film, Chicken Run.

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