Abstract
Situated at the intersection of Critical Archival Studies and art and design history and practice, this Critical Account and accompanying Portfolio of publications are, in part, a response to an understanding, from my work as a researcher and a practitioner, that, ‘humanities scholarship is suffering from a failure of interdisciplinarity when it comes to archives’ (Caswell 2016). The period covered in this Portfolio (2008-2024) has seen a flourishing of interdisciplinary literature on archives, but a paucity of representation of the work of archivists or recognition of the research value of the knowledge generated in their practice. Addressing the particular contexts of the archive in art and design, this body of work critically articulates aspects of the intellectual and cultural capital of the art and design archivist, alongside other forms of curatorial and scholarly knowledge. It frames archivists as active agents and participants in archival discourse, and presents novel methods to mobilise the distinct and often undervalued perspective of an archive practitioner, embedded in the archive.Using the portfolio of works, I present embodied practitioner knowledge as a distinct mode of meaning making that unlocks new evidence and insights, as part of which I propose the concept of terroir. I then propose a model of archival perception and archival perceptibility as a means to unlock the phenomenological interaction that emerges from the witnessing of the archive through professional practice. These two methods are used to frame the Portfolio, where I situate the significance of my publications in the development of my research and their wider contribution to knowledge in:
(1) Art and design archives in theory and practice, which synthesise art and design history and Critical Archive Studies
(2) Art and design history through archives, producing art and design historical works that mobilize the deep knowledge and insights generated from an archivist’s ‘slow criticality’ (Spieker, 2016); and
(3) Archive-based methodologies for art and design history, as publications which more explicitly expand art and design history through these perspectives and practices.
Through this Portfolio of published work and accompanying Critical Account, I outline my contribution to knowledge in Critical Archive Studies and in art and design history and practice, and to collaborative meaning-making and co-production of and from the archive. This reinserts the voice of the archivist not only as witness to the art and design archive but as a critical practitioner.
| Date of Award | Jun 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Annebella Pollen (Supervisor) |