News & events
Upcoming Events
CfAAA Talk
We are delighted to announce that the next Centre for African Art and Archaeology talk will be held on 23rd February. Dr Simon Dell of the Department of Art History and World Art Studies at UEA will be presenting "Living Images of Flesh: France, Africa and the Colonial Imaginary, 1885-1939."
Tuesday 23rd February, 5pm, SRU seminar Room, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. All Welcome!
https://www.facebook.com/events/1053822064659587/
Fiji: Art and Life in the Pacific
A major exhibition of Fijian art will open at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in 2016. Titled 'Fiji: Art and Life in the Pacific' the exhibition will be the most comprehensive exhibition about Fiji and Fijian art ever assembled. It is curated by SRU Director Steve Hooper, and co-curated by Karen Jacobs and Katrina Igglesden, also from the SRU. It is one of the culminations of the Fijian Art Research Project.
SiFA World Art Research Seminars
These seminars run on a Wednesday evening from 5pm in the SCVA lecture theatre. For further information, please visit the School website.
ART/SRU Postgraduate Research Seminars
These seminars run every Thursday evening from 5pm - 6.30pm in the SRU seminar room in the SCVA. Full details of the Spring 2016 programme can be found here.
News
MA applications now being accepted.
Why study at the SRU?
Small, dedicated programme. There is no other Masters degree programme like ours in the world. We purposefully limit our enrolment (between 7-10), to cater to the needs of each and every student and to deliver the most engaging student experience. This allows substantial contact time with each staff lecturer, to discuss course topics, research opportunities and careers. Modules are designed to complement the other SRU course modules only. The programme does not usually crossover with other Univ offerings; only available to our taught MAs, there is little repetition, basic introduction and time wasting from a teaching or administrative standpoint.
Deepen your knowledge of your particular interest. Students learn and see things that they want, directly related to their interests. Through sessions and feedback, students are taught how to develop their academic skills. Reading is essential: at the library, at home, at your work station, digitally and as hardcopy. The work culminates in a large research study/project, the MA dissertation, of your own design, which we help to advise and steer.
Student financial assistance. The SRU offers generous scholarships to promising students who are offered places in the MA programmes. These are offered yearly, and can cover fees/tuition and help with living expenses. We also have a superb record of securing university and extramural funding for our students. Student bursaries are also available to interested and qualified students, as work-study assistance in different SRU initiatives (library, collections, research projects, website).
Track record of success. Having been in existence for nearly three decades, we know what works and fosters success in our programme, and don’t tinker much with it. Tried and true teaching delivery is emphasised: programme is seminar-based, with class trips; assessment is based on written work, participation and in-course trajectory.
Top notch scholarship. Staff lecturers are world-renowned in their international research programmes. High level research ongoing on topics concerning West and East Africa, Polynesia and Melanesia, Amazonia and Andes.
Highly-regarded facilities. The SRU is based in the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, a modern building with gallery, teaching and library facilities. All teaching is done in the building; the gallery’s masterpieces play a major role in teaching and discussions. Students each have individual work spaces in the building, located directly above the library, and there is dedicated library staff to help with research, skills training and bibliography.
SRU community. Each year, MA students from around the world come to form a tight-knit group -- studying and travelling together, sharing ideas and learning as a team. The MA cohort also comprises part of a similarly close community with SRU research students, lecturers and staff – nested within the UEA campus. Once a student begins the programme, everyone at SRU is fully committed to her/his needs and intellectual success. A wide, international network of former students and colleagues may be called to help support placement, training and academic opportunities around the world.
Norwich. Nestled in Norfolk, studying in Norwich will be a special once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Norwich is affordable, yet bursting with old and new culture alike, with all the amenities of a UK/European city. There is something for everybody.
Excellence in placement after degree. After completion of programme, SRU is class-leading in placing their MA students. Many find jobs in museum and university administration work. Some students carry on into PhD programmes, continuing with SRU or other higher education institutions with academic pursuits. Students also use their new knowledge and training in related career fields, e.g., publishing, graphic design, art sales.
Spring Visting Fellow
Dr. Max Carocci (Adjunct Lecturer Museum and Curating MA) Chelsea College of Art, University of the Arts, London
Max Carocci is an anthropologist specialised in the art and cultures of Native North American peoples. His work mainly focuses on how indigenous North American material and visual expressions articulate ideas of the person and the sacred.
His book Warriors of the Plains (McGill University Press/British Museum Press, 2012) advanced new approaches to the interpretation of Native North American expressive cultures that challenged formalist readings of North American indigenous arts. This work revealed some of the limitations of current interpretative paradigms, a topic that he will further explore in the current research on representations of the face among Plains Indians while at the Sainsbury Research Unit.
Selected articles and chapters*
2015 ‘Gender and Material Culture in Historical American Indian Societies’ in M. Schultz (Ed.) Native North American Collections in the Historisches Volkerkunde Museum St. Gallen (Switzerland)
2015 ‘Text-(tiles): the Material Histories of Shan Goshorn and Sarah Sense’ in Kathy McRuiz (Ed.) Intertwined: Stories of Splintered Pasts. The Art of Shan Goshorn and Sarah Sense Tulsa: Hardesty Art Center
2014 ‘Squaring the Circle: an Anthropological Reading of Chitimacha Baskets’ Cosmos (30)
2013 ‘Contemporary Native North American Collections in the British Museum’ American Indian Art Magazine 38(3)
2010 ‘Clad in the Hair of Trees: Uses of Spanish Moss in Native American Textile Industries’ Textile History 41(1)
2010 ‘Textiles of Healing: Native American AIDS Memorial Quilts’ Textile: the Journal of Cloth and Culture 8(1)
2009 ‘Visualizing Gender in Plains Indian Pictographic Art’ American Indian Culture and Research Journal 33(1)
*Most articles and chapters can be found in PDF form under Dr. Carocci’s page on academia.edu.
Editoral Assistant joins Crossroads project
Florence Reynolds has recently joined the Crossroads of Empires project as an editorial assistant. She has a background in communications and marketing in the heritage sector and a BA in English Literature from the University of East Anglia. She will be based in the Crescent Wing with Lynne Crossland and will be working on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays.
Leverhulme Grant success for Dr Anne Haour
Dr Anne Haour has been awarded a major research grant by the Leverhulme Trust to study the distribution of cowrie shells in West African from archaeological, museological and biological perspectives.
In West African archaeology, cowries are considered a key indicator of international exchange, and it is known through historical records that a main producer was the Maldives. However, the Islamic period archaeology of the Maldives has never been examined, and the taxonomy of the various shells has not been given detailed treatment by marine biologists. Nor have the questions been answered as to why the Maldives became a key producer or why cowrie shells came to take on important ritual and social, as well as economic, functions within African communities. These are the problems to be examined by the research team, which will consist of Dr Haour, SRU Anniversary Fellow Dr Savage, colleagues in Environmental Studies, SRU PhD student Shiura Jaufar and Postdoc researcher Annalisa Christie.
Ceremonial staff. Central and East Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo: Luba-Hemba. Late 19th century. figure h. 24.1 cm. UEA 266