Tom Vickery

Profile

I am an Amanda Burton Scholarship holder and PhD researcher at the University of Leeds, School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies. I previously received an Undergraduate Degree at the University of Sheffield in History and Politics, and a Masters Degree in History of Art from SOAS University, London.

Awards

Amanda Burton Scholarship, 2023 – 2027

AHC Faculty Research Dissemination Award, 2023 – 2025 (x3)

Association for Art History, Grants for Art History, 2024 – 2026 (x2)

Conferences

Reactivating Archives in Contemporary Art, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2025

Association for Art History Annual Conference, Community and Activism in the Global South, 2025

Restitution: A Ghana-UK Dialogue, FAHACS, University of Leeds x Department of Archeology and Heritage Studies, University of Ghana, 2025

Transcultural Encounters: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Language, History and Culture in a Global Society, Cardiff University, 2024

Research Placements

Visiting Researcher, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2025/6

Visiting Researcher, Universidade Amílcar Cabral, Bissau, 2024

Talks/External Activities

Screening and introductory talk, Spell Reel (2017) dir. Filipa César, Hyde Park Picture House, Tuesday Wonders x Cinema Africa!, 2024

Guest speaker, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Art History Institute (IHA), Contemporary Art Studies (CASt) research group, ‘Animism, Film and the Mangrove: Reading Luta Ca Caba Inda through Film as an Animist Medium’, 2026

Research interests

Tom is a PhD researcher in the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds

and has recently held visiting researcher positions at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Universidade

Amílcar Cabral, Bissau. He is an eco-critical art historian working across lens-based, contemporary art

practice within postcolonial contexts. His work concerns productive relationality in the archival research

work of artist, Filipa César. Specifically, he is researching the re-activation of Bissau-Guinean militant

cinema and how this, as a networked process, holds deep potential for provoking future-facing,

ecological alternatives under the context of neocolonial extraction in West Africa and beyond.

Qualifications

• MA History of Art
• BA History and Politics