Dr Alexandra Kokoli

Interim DoP for Fine Art

Alexandra Kokoli

  • School Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries

  • Department School of Arts

  • Location London

Research activities

  • Art and/as activism
  • Intersectional feminism in art and visual culture
  • The tensions between theory and practice
  • Psychoanalysis and critical theory
  • Textiles and fiber art
  • Feminist heritage and feminist approaches to heritage

    • Current Teaching

    I teach visual culture and contemporary art practices to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and supervise practice-led researchers. I currently teach on:

  • BA Fine Art, Year 1, FNA1903: Art and Visual Culture
  • BA Fine Art, Year 2, FNA2903: Research and Critical Analysis
  • BA Fine Art, Year 3, FNA3630: Professional Practice & Curatorial Knowledge
  • BA Fine Art, Year 3: dissertation supervision

    • Current PGR supervision:

  • Kars Dodds, Dancing with Boobs: Investigating the Embodied Experience of AFAB Non-binary Dance Artists, MRes
  • Anke Kempkes, Concrete Women: The Gender Paradox in AbstractModernism, PhD by Public Works
  • Qingyu Shen, Challenges and Reconstructions: Femininity inContemporary Chinese Feminist Art from the 1990s to the Present, PhD

    • Completed PGR supervision: 

    1. Dr. Bronwyn Platten, ‘Mouths and Meaning: A multi-sensory, creative and collaborativearts based exploration of food, eating and embodiment towards gaining greaterunderstanding of the experience of eating disorders’, HaCIRIC, Department forthe Built and Human Environment, University of Salford, 2012.

    2. Dr. Paul Thompson, ‘An examination of thephysical and temporal parameters of printmaking practice through theexploration and application of digital processes in making and cultural shiftsin digital participation’, RGU, 2014.

    3. Dr. Felicity Allen, ‘Creating the "dis-oeuvre": Interpretingfeminist interventions as an expanded artistic practice in relation to art'sinstitutions’, Middlesex University, 2016.

    4. Dr. Caroline Gausden, ‘Feminist Manifestos and SociallyEngaged Practice’, RGU, 2017.

    5. Dr. Helen Bendon, ‘The artist as historyteller withinmuseum and heritage sites’, Middlesex, 2018.

    6. Dr. Kodwo Eshun, ‘The Philatelic Imagination of Pan-AfricanIndependence Under Platform Capitalism’, Middlesex, 2019.

    7. Dr. Murray Anderson, ‘Queer Aesthetics of Empathy andGothicness in Contemporary Sculpture’, Middlesex, 2020.

    8. Dr. Paula Chambers, ‘Feral Objects and Acts of DomesticPiracy: Sculpture, Secular Magic and Strategies of Feminist Disruption’,Middlesex, 2020.

    9. Dr. Sonya Dyer, ‘Towards Dark Fecundity - ReimaginingBlack futures through visual arts practice, science fiction and Greekmythology’, 2021.


    Biography

    I am an art historian, theorist, and educator of art practitioners, with an investment in art’s capacity for positive social change. My research into the aesthetics of feminist anti-nuclear activism at Greenham Common has been supported by the Paul Mellon Centre and the Leverhulme Trust. In addition to the rich interface between art and activism, I am interested in art practices informed by and committed to feminism, as well as psychoanalytic approaches to visual and material culture. 

    My publications include the edited collections Feminism Reframed, The Provisional Texture of Reality: Selected Talks and Texts by Susan Hiller, 1977-2007, (with Deborah Cherry), Art into Life: Essays on Tracey Emin, and the monograph The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice, where I explore aesthetic mobilisations of discomfort to feminist ends. I have published widely on artists including Quilla Constance, Susan Hiller, Catherine Hoffmann, and Monica Ross, and I am currently working on feminist approaches to heritage and commemoration through art practice. I sometimes curate and consult on curatorial projects involving artists whose practice I have researched, including crochet and textile artist Su Richardson. I am also research associate at the Centre for Visual Identities in Art and Design (VIAD) at the University of Johannesburg, a transnational network of researchers foregrounding priorities and perspectives from the global south.

    Education and qualifications

    2019: SeniorFellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), ref PR176030 (2019).

    2004:DPhil in Modern European Literature, Graduate Research Centrefor the Humanities, University of Sussex.

    1998:MA in Comparative Literary Theory (Distinction), Centre forTranslation and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Warwick.

    1997:BA Hons in Modern Letters (1st), Department of Literature,Faculty of Philosophy, Aristotle University (Greece).

    Grants

    • AHRB doctoral fees-only award, September 1999 [ref. no.: 99/3279].

    Offered for D.Phil. research studentship at the University of Sussex. By application. Value: approx. £9,000.

    • State Scholarships Foundation (Greece), October 1999 to March 2003.

    Full graduate scholarship in Comparative Literature, 1999, received for D.Phil. research studentship at the University of Sussex. By written examination. Value: approx. £30,000.

    • ADRI-funded Teaching Remission of one day per week for 2014-2015 (2014) towards the completion of my book The Feminist Uncanny. Value: approx. £4,000.

    • AAH award of £500 towards copyright and reprographic costs for The Feminist Uncanny (2014).

    • Paul Mellon Centre Publication Grant for Tracey Emin: Art into Life (co-edited with Deborah Cherry), November 2017, value: £1,680.

    • Paul Mellon Centre Mid-Career Fellowship for the project The Virtual Feminist Museum of Greenham Common, 2019, value: £15,000.

    • Advance HE Connect funding for the project ‘Feminism in an International Art Curriculum’, led by Professor Katy Deepwell (Middlesex), with Alexandra Kokoli (Middlesex), Dr. Catherine Harrington (Tokyo University of the Arts), Professor Griselda Pollock (Leeds University), and Professor Anne Swartz (Savannah College of Art and Design), 2020, value: £1,000.

    • Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, Art and Visual Activism at Greenham Common, 2020, value: £30,805.

    • British Academy Writing Workshops, ‘Training and Mentorship for Practice-based Researchers in Design, Visual and Performing Arts’, led by Dr. Kene Igweonu as principal investigator (MDX), with Alexandra Kokoli (MDX), Adeelah Kodabux (MDX Mauritius), and Leora Farber (Johannesburg), as co-investigators, 2021, value: £19,754.

    • British Academy Writing Workshops Alumni Funding, ‘Transnational Early Career Research Network (TECReN) in Visual and Performing Arts’, led by Prof. Kene Igweonu (UAL), with Alexandra Kokoli, Leora Farber, and Sunday Ododo as co-investigators, April 2023-March 2025, value: £29,930.

    Publications

    View publications