Visiting Scholars
Visiting Professors
Visiting Research Fellows
Lennard J Davis is Professor in the Department of English, Department of Disability and Human Development, and Department of Medical Education at University of Illinois at Chicago. He writes prolifically, lectures internationally, and broadcasts on literature, disability, the medical humanities, and science within the context of the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Professor Davis’s books include Factual Fictions (1983), Resisting Novels (1987), Enforcing Normalcy (1995), The Disability Studies Reader (1997), My Sense of Silence (2000), Bending over Backwards (2002), Obsession (2008), and Go Tell Your Father (2009). He has been honoured regularly by the likes of the Guggenheim, and has extensive senior management experience as Head of School, as the Director of the international project Biocultures, and as a member of the Executive Committee on Stem-Cell Research at Illinois.
External Website: http://www.lennarddavis.com/
Ferran Barenblit is Director of Spain’s recently opened art centre Centro Dos de Mayo, Móstoles in Madrid, and has introduced innovative curatorial, educational, and publishing initiatives in Europe and the USA. Before arriving in Madrid, he was Director of the Centre d'Art Santa Mònica (CASM) in Barcelona. At CASM, an art centre that worked with artists, writers, critics, and curators to think about art and its place in contemporary culture and society, Ferran was responsible for introducing innovative curatorial, education, and publishing initiatives. Prior to his time at CASM, he was a free-lance curator (1996-2002) and Assistant Curator, The New Museum, New York (1994-1996).
Rachel Lichtenstein is author of Rodinsky's Room (With Iain Sinclair), Rodinsky's Whitechapel, On Brick Lane, has books forthcoming on Hatton Garden and Portobello Road, and is intrigued by how as writers we mobilize their research practices to animate archives.
External Website: http://zenoagency.com/clients-list/l/lichtenstein-rachel/
Sina Najafi is a Founder and the editor-in-chief of the New York-based Cabinet Magazine, a quarterly nonprofit publication. Fascinated by curiosity itself, Sina is responsible for driving a huge range of cultural activities including the organization of exhibitions and conferences and non-traditional publications. He is Director of the New York-based nonprofit arts organization Immaterial Incorporated, which also publishes Cabinet and serves as an umbrella for a broad range of cultural activities, including the organization of exhibitions and conferences and nontraditional publications. Participants include artists, architects, anthropologists, historians, poets and philosophers, among others. He has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, NYU, Princeton University, Columbia University, Cooper Union, and Stockholm University, and is formerly co-editor-in-chief of Merge magazine, published in Stockholm and New York, and Index magazine, published in Stockholm.
External Website: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/index.php
Dominic Willsdon is the Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and the San Francisco Art Institute. He’s taught on the graduate programs in curating and exhibition studies at the Royal College of Art, London, and California College of the Arts. From 2000 to 2005, Dominic was Curator of Public Events at Tate Modern. He has published articles on aesthetics, politics and education, and is co-editor (with Diarmuid Costello) of The Life and Death of Images: Ethics and Aesthetics (Tate & Cornell UP, 2008). Dominic oversees education, interpretation and public programs at SFMOMA, an area that currently includes new initiatives in performance/live art, educational media and the Bay Area blog Open Space. He is currently researching the history of experimental education for artists.Links:
http://www.sfmoma.org/pages/explore
http://pickpocketalmanack.org/
Peter Cornwell is director of the media research company BLIP, working on new display technologies and cultural impact of the intersection of displays and architecture. A former director of the Institute for Visual Media at ZKM, Germany and Professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, he was also director of the Visual Theory Group in the Department of Computing at Imperial College, London and manager of European research and development for Texas Instruments. Earlier he formed Division, Inc. in California, which became a publicly held virtual reality (VR) company working with NASA and Silicon Graphics Inc., developing commercial 3D visualisation products for aerospace, architecture and pharmaceutical companies. In 1995 he developed commercial displays for The Coca-Cola Company and has subsequently built largescale LED installations in several countries for companies such as Samsung and Landrover. His dynamically computed, 3D creative-driven approach to these installations has become the benchmark for spectacular displays in public spaces. He is currently professor of public art at Central Saint Martins, London and a member of artist group Flunk.