Dr Alison Green

Biography

Dr Alison Green is a Reader in Art, Curating and Culture at Central Saint Martins and Co-Director of Doctoral Training and Development at UAL's Doctoral School. She is a researcher, scholar, writer and academic leader in the history and theory of art, and curating as creative and social practices.

Her scholarly work is in two main areas: the 1960s as a decade of change that shifted the nature of art, its social purpose and how artists work and the history of exhibitions and curatorial practice. Current research projects include a study of exhibitions through a critical examination of themes of time, and an edited collection of essay on curating and social practice.

Alison's commitment to outstanding creative education is deep and extensive: at Central Saint Martins she teaches history and theory on BA, MA and PhD level. During her 10-year role as Course Leader of MA Culture, Criticism and Curation she developed a postgraduate curating programme of international standing and reputation. In the Culture and Enterprise Programme she has contributed to its growth as a research-led department working across disciplinary boundaries to open critical understandings of cultural value. Having been PGR Training Manager for the 2022-23 academic year, she is contributing to the development of doctoral training and development at UAL and its Doctoral School, opening in Autumn 2023.

Alison leads on developments to find models for understanding cultural value in relation to systems of economic and social thinking. With more than a dozen curatorial projects undertaken through MA CCC and C&E partnering with galleries, businesses, charities and public bodies, she’s working to enable researchers, partners and students to learn through doing, to work with audiences directly and demonstrate how curatorial research and practice engages and shares knowledge. These projects have had direct social impact, for example The People’s Carnival, 2017, with Alexandra Palace and young people from Haringey Shed on the history of music and protest, The Peckham Cultural Institute, 2014 with South London Gallery on digital democracy; Acts of Searching Closely, 2017 with ASC Gallery on artist-led research and place; and the curatorial residencies and exhibitions, Our Way[s] of Life and Language Strategies, 2018 and 2019, with the Austrian Cultural Forum London and the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna. She was part of an international network, To School or Not To School: A Future Curatorial Institute, a project funded by the LUMA Foundation and led by Bard Center for Curatorial Studies (New York) with Central Saint Martins and Goldsmiths (London), Valand Akademie (Gothenburg), De Appel (Amsterdam), Bétonsalon (Paris) and V-A-C (Moscow). This group organised three international symposia and three books: The Future Curatorial Whatnot and Study-What Conundrum (2016), How Institutions Think (2017) and Curating After the Global: Roadmaps for the Present (2019).

Alison has a vision for the powerful impact curating can have on bringing important issues to public attention and opening up a space for dialogue. Her broader projects is to expand understandings of art practice, exhibition histories and curatorial practice, with a critical focus on feminism and capitalism and their potential to change institutional practice and knowledge production. This can be implemented through pedagogic projects; curatorial work; network-type projects on emerging forms of curatorial practice, citizenship and community; and scholarship on exhibition histories and time.