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Graduate Research Programmes

Research Programmes

The postgraduate programme at UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy incorporates both full and part-time research degrees at MLitt and PhD level in Art History, and in Cultural Policy and Arts Management.  An MLitt is usually completed within 2 years, while PhD research is normally undertaken over a 3-4 year period (longer if part-time).

The School is the largest of its kind in Ireland, and prides itself on the diversity and excellence of its research output and supervision. Potential students are warmly encouraged to approach individual members of faculty with ideas and topics that may foster successful research projects. For a guide to faculty members’ interests and contact details see Staff Research below. 

Dr Annette Clancy, MSc, PhD (Bath) Organisational behaviour; emotion in organisations; management within the arts and cultural sector. [email]
Assoc. Prof. Philip Cottrell, MA, PhD (St Andrew's) Sixteenth-century Venetian painting; art and death in Europe 1400-1700; seventeeth-century English tomb sculpture; nineteeth-century old master collecting in Britain. [email]
Dr Victoria Durrer, MA, PhD (Liverpool) Place, identity, representation, and voice in cultural policy and arts management decisions and practices. [email]
Prof. Kathleen James-Chakraborty, MA, PhD (UPenn) Architectural history around the world since 1600. [email]
Dr Róisín Kennedy, MLitt (Edin), PhD (NUI) Modern and contemporary art; Irish art and art institutions 1880 to present; modernism and nationalism, and the public and critical reception of art post 1800. [email]
Dr Sean Leatherbury, MPhil, PhD (Oxford)  Roman, late antique, and Byzantine art and architecture; early Islamic art; word and image; religious and cultural identity in antiquity; cultural heritage; digital humanities. [email]
Assoc. Prof. John Loughman, MA, PhD (Lond) History & visual culture of the Low Countries in the seventeeth and eighteeth centuries; printmaking. [email]
Assoc. Prof. Conor Lucey, MA, PhD (NUI) Domestic architecture in eighteenth-century Ireland, Britain and North America; architectural ornament and decoration; design and the decorative interior in Europe 1600-1840. [email]
Assoc. Prof. Emily Mark-FitzGerald, MA (Indiana University), PhD (NUI) Irish art history, visual culture, museum/heritage studies and cultural policy from the nineteeth century to the present. [email]
Prof. Lynda Mulvin, MArchSc (Cons) (KU Louvain), PhD (Dub) Greek and Roman art and architecture; Medieval art and architecture; nineteeth-century art and architecture; conservation of archaeological sites and historic buildings. [email]

Applicants should begin by contacting a member of staff whose research interests seem most relevant to their own ideas and interests. Informal enquiries and expressions of interest are very welcome. With the approval of a potential academic supervisor, students should then seek to develop a clear and focussed idea of their research topic in the form of a well-written proposal. This should act as a prelude to completing an online application. 

UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy

Newman Building, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
T: +353 1 716 8162 | E: arthistory.culturalpolicy@ucd.ie