Dr Ceren Özpınar is a Senior Lecturer and the Course Leader for BA (Hons) Art History and Visual Culture, BA (Hons) History of Art and Design, and BA (Hons) Visual Culture. She has taught in the areas of art and cultural history, critical studies, art management and visual culture since 2008. Before coming to Brighton, she held post- and pre-doctoral fellowships: a British Academy Newton International Fellowship at the University of Sussex (2015-17), and a Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of Leeds (2013-14). Ceren completed her PhD in History of Art at Istanbul Technical University in 2015. She also holds an MA in Fashion and Textile Design and a BA in Art Management with Curating. 

At Brighton, Ceren has taught on art history and visual culture courses since 2017. She teaches across core modules and has delivered specialist modules including Sexual Politics: Art and Feminism, Understanding Exhibitions and Creating Displays, and Gender and Sexuality in Art and Visual Culture. Ceren also taught Historical and Critical Studies to BA (Hons) Painting, BA (Hons) Sculpture, BA (Hons) Critical Practice and BA (Hons) Printmaking between 2017 and 2021. She has a PGCert in Teaching & Learning in Higher Education and is Fellow of the Advance HE (FHEA). 

Dr Ceren Özpınar is a historian specialising in art, visual culture, historiography and exhibitions in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her research focuses on the relationship between gender, identity and art since 1960 with a special focus on Turkey and the Middle East. Ceren's research interests lie in three key areas: Revisiting art histories; investigating transnational feminist alliances in the wider Middle Eastern geography; and an examination of curatorial strategies and discourses of large-scale exhibitions, such as retrospectives and biennials, in the Global South.

Ceren's research has been supported by the British Academy, College Art Association (CAA), the Getty Foundation, Association for Art History (AAH), and the Turkish Research Council (TUBITAK). In 2020, Ceren was awarded a Rising Star, which is one of the University of Brighton's research awards, for her project "Where Matter Meets Memory: Alternative Political Futures in Kurdish Art Today.” Ceren's project investigates creative works produced within the diasporic Kurdish communities.

Publications

Ceren's latest book, a co-edited volume titled Under The Skin: Feminist Art and Art Histories from The Middle East and North Africa Today, is published by Oxford University Press and The British Academy in 2020 (read the reviews in Oxford Art Journal, Third Text and Woman's Art Journal). Her first monograph The Art Historiography in Turkey (1970-2010), which stemmed from her doctoral thesis, was published in 2016 by Tarih Vakfi Press. She is currently completing her second monograph, which is also forthcoming with Oxford University Press and The British Academy. This book investigates the relationship between art history and women artists in Turkey, and is building on her Newton research project entitled "Re-visiting Feminist Temporalities in Art and Art History in Turkey from the 1970s onwards" (2015-17).

Ceren's latest articles appeared in the Art Journal, Art in Translation, Art & the Public Sphere, and Third Text. She wrote several essays for edited volumes and special issues on invitation, including Image & Text (ed. Schmahmann), A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework (eds. Jones & Davidson), and Transnational Perspectives on Feminism and Art, 1960-1985 (eds. Kennedy, Szymanek & Mallory).

Ceren sits on the Association for Art History's Higher Education Committee, and the International Advisory Board of Manazir, a peer-reviewed journal and online platform for the study of visual arts, architecture and heritage in the Middle East and North Africa. She is an Expert Evaluator for the European Commission's Horizon 2020, the British Academy, and the British Institute at Ankara. She regularly undertakes peer reviews for journals including Art History, Art in Translation, Journal of the Middle East Women's Studies, Visual Studies, and World Art; and publishers including London-based Anthem Press, Bloomsbury Academic, and University of California Press.

Ceren also leads a team of researchers for the Paris-based AWARE (Archives of Women Artists Research and Exhibitions), who contribute biographies of women artists from the Middle East to their online database.

Ceren welcomes media requests. Check out her latest press appearance in the Apollo Art Magazine.

Dr Ceren Özpınar has supervised one PhD to completion, and currently supervises two PhD students at Brighton and one at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, who work on subjects in transnational storytelling, lesser-known women artists and designers in the 20th century, feminism in the museum, and textile-based artistic practices. 

Ceren would be interested in supervising PhD projects on feminist and queer approaches to art; transnational art histories; narratives of difference; memory and materiality. She would also welcome proposals interested in researching any aspect of the project of decolonising the history of art and exhibitions, particularly but not exclusively, in the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and North African geographies.

Ceren also hosts visiting doctoral researchers on a regular basis. If you are working on a PhD project at another institution related to her research expertise and would like to be supervised by her at Brighton for a short period (up to a year), feel free to contact her.