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Staff Profile

Professor Richard Clay

Background

I am currently a Professor of Digital Cultures at Newcastle University and Co-Director of the Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute (NUHRI).

Academic background


In 1994, I graduated from University of York in History and History of Art. Having taken my MA and AHRB-funded PhD in history of art at UCL, I became a Henry Moore Foundation post-doctoral Research Fellow there before joining University of Birmingham in 2002. Initially based in the History of Art department, I moved on to co-found and co-direct the £3.5m, cross-disciplinary and cross-sector, Digital Humanities Hub working with small businesses and cultural organisations. In 2014, I was appointed as the AHRC Commons Leadership Fellow to help shape a new initiative for that Research Council. In 2015, I joined University of Newcastle where I continue to support collaborations across disciplines and sectors.

 

Most of my published research has focused on aspects of iconoclasm’s histories, but I’ve also written about: contemporary jewellery as sculpture; Matthew Boulton and mass produced art of the 1790s; graffiti’s roles in armed conflict; cross-sector collaboration; and the roles of the digital in cultural collections’ display spaces. In 2009, I co-curated a Barber Institute of Fine Art exhibition and, in 2014, helped to lead the AHRC International Network that advised Tate Britain on its 2013 show Art Under Attack. I’ve written and presented 7 x 60-minute BBC4 documentaries:Tearing Up History; A Brief History Of Graffiti; the 3 part series Utopia In Search Of The Dream; How To Go Viral: The Art Of The Meme; and C21st Mythologies. Most of my films are freely (and illegally!) available online and my BBC Radio 4 documentary, Two Minutes to Midnight, is accessible via the BBC website. I’ve also led and worked on a wide range of externally funded projects. You might say that my interests are broad.

Publications