Dr Robert Knifton
Email: robert.knifton@manchester.ac.uk
Phone: 0161-275 3436
Room: 3.4, Mansfield Cooper
Profile
Robert is Temporary Lecturer in Museology for 2009/10. He studied Politics and Modern History and Art Gallery & Museum Studies at Manchester before writing his Ph.D. on contemporary urban curating at Manchester Metropolitan University. Roberts Ph.D. project incorporated work as co-curator on Tate Liverpools Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant-Garde as part of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award. He is active as a curator, and in 2008 curated Ruinous Recollections with Dr Darien Rozentals from RICC. As well as teaching on the
Art Gallery and Museum Studies MA programme, Robert co-ordinates the professional development programme for North West museum staff, and is a member of Contemporary Visual Arts Manchester a network of leading contemporary art spaces in the city. Museum-related projects conducted by Robert include work for Cube, RIBA, Tate, University Museums Group and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Current Research
Ruinous Recollections: Artistic Drifts through Post-Industrial Manchester
Behind the visible built environment of the city lurk fictions and memories. Neglected narratives echo through the red-brick ruins, a literary psychogeography where spectres of a forgotten past ghost-write their tales onto the decaying urban fabric. Taking stories from notable historical figures connected with Manchester, the artists who compose the Ruinous Recollections project aim to present a mental mapping of the city that constantly evolves.
Postgraduate Teaching
Robert teaches in the MA Art Gallery and Museum Studies. In particular:
- 'Museum and its Contexts' (1st semester core course; contributor)
- 'Museums, Museology, Museographies' (1st semester core course; contributor)
- Art in the City (2nd semester option course; course convenor)
Selected Publications
- You'll Never Walk Alone: CCTV in Two Liverpool Art Projects, Conspiracy Dwellings: Surveillance in Contemporary Art, Outi Remes (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press (forthcoming)
- Curating the City as Text: Contesting Art Display using Literary Narrative, Telling Stories: Visual Practices, Theories and Narrative, Jane Tormey and Gillian Whiteley (eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press 2009
- Liverpool: The Artists Sessions, Art in a City Revisited, Bryan Biggs & Julie Sheldon (eds.), Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009
- Manchester - So Much to Answer For. Manchester Drifts: Histories, Memories, Fictions, Territories Reimagined: International Perspectives, Manchester: MIRIAD Press, 2008 (with Darien Rozentals)
- Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant-Garde, Christoph Grunenberg & Robert Knifton (eds.), Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007