Research

UCL History of Art overall best in London for Art and Design (REF 2021)

Our department’s research has been ranked 1st in London and 3rd in the UK for Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory by REF 2021 (overall GPA rankings). Read about the REF.

While our research is not simply organised by periods or geographic areas, we are committed to historical inquiry from the Middle Ages to the present and collaborate in research networks on contemporary art and theory; early modern, colonial and postcolonial histories (Britain and British India, Europe, South Africa, the Americas); histories of the body (gender, sexuality, psychoanalysis, ethnicities, biopolitics); and the formation of art historical knowledge itself.

As one of the first History of Art departments in the UK to pursue feminist studies, explore issues of class and inequality, and visual studies of difference, these explorations formed the groundwork for the pioneering critical approaches for which we are now known. The Department also has a longstanding expertise in the study of print culture and other visual technologies (photography, film, digital), which has emerged in tandem with the Department’s longstanding commitment to materials and conservation, a focus of research served by our unique Material Studies Laboratory.

Public Engagement