Dr Elspeth Mitchell

Profile

In October 2021 I joined the University of Leeds as the Griselda Pollock Legacy Lecturer where my teaching and research explores practices and theories of feminism and visual culture. I have published in the areas of feminist philosophy, girls’ studies, environmental feminisms, performance art and theory, digital art history, artist’s moving image and cinema. I am co-investigator the project Feminist Art Making Histories (with Professor Hilary Robinson, Dr Tina Kinsella and Dr Amy Tobin) funded by the AHRC and IRC, a digital humanities project that records, curates and archives oral histories of those engaged in art and feminism in the UK and Ireland from the 1970s onwards.

Prior to joining the school I was Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the AHRC funded project Fabulous Femininities: Extravagant Costume and Transformative Thresholds. I have also held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art and was Research Associate in Practices and Theories of Feminism and Art at Loughborough University with Professor Hilary Robinson. My doctoral thesis, completed in 2018, was an in-depth study of ‘the Girl’ and moving image artworks. In the thesis the Girl was addressed as a question, specifically posed to a text by feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), and artworks by two artists/filmmakers, Chantal Akerman (1950–2015) and Eija-Liisa Ahtila (b.1959).

From 2017–2020 I was producer for arts organisation Pavilion of Art School for Rebel Girls, a project rooted in feminist pedagogy, which developed from a series of collaborative creative workshops led for, with and by young women (13–16) in Leeds. Working with other invited artists and curators, we formed a collective intergenerational working group who make exhibitions, curate film screenings and produce other artistic and cultural activities together. Previously I have held the roles of Yorkshire editor for Corridor8, associate editor of parallax  and co-director of SPUR. I have worked with artists, perfomers, filmmakers, writers and theorists including Alex Martinis Roe, Helen de Main, Maria Fusco, Iris Zaki, Soofiya Andry, Jennifer Reeder and Luce Irigaray on screenings, reading groups, exhibitions and events across the country. In 2016, I co-founded Feminist Readings Network / Réseau Lectures Féministes, which provides a translingual space to explore feminist, queer and anti-racist thought, art and pedagogy.

Research interests

My research intersects the fields of feminist theory, cultural studies, art history, critical ecologies and girls’ studies.

Feminist Art Making Histories (FAMH) is a three-year AHRC/IRC funded (£600,000) digital humanities oral history project on which I am co-investigator. The project documents sixty oral history interviews which unveil the encounter between feminism and art across Ireland and the UK.

Mycorrhizal Encounters is a research project which explores what encounters with fungi do at the intersection of visual culture and ecology and navigates cultural practices as a site for responding to and contributing toward the shift away from carbon and extractive economies, racial capitalism, and heteropatriarchy. The research coincides with a boom in popular and academic interest in fungi in ecology and culture, and the innovation of my research lies in its unique address of fungi to questions of representation and visual culture.  Part of this includes Out of Office, which began as a feminist reading and mushroom foraging walk in 2017. The aim of these walks was to enable us and other participants to critically reflect on the conditions of feminist academic labour, through feminist readings and mushroom hunting. In autumn 2021 we curated a series Mycorrhizal Encounters conversations with artists, activists, and researchers who work with the versatility of fungi and the resourcefulness of mycorrhizal communities. Most recently we created a guided walk in the forest with FUTUROPOLIS: School of Emancipation (illustrations by Eva Koťátková) available for download in English here.

In 2021 I was part of the first cohort of ‘World Changers’ essayists at the University of Leeds for my project Art School for Rebel Girls that ran 2017-2020 in association with the arts organisation Pavilion. The project drew inspiration from the feminist art and activism in Leeds in the 1980s, exploring new spaces and approaches for young women to foster confidence, creativity and collaboration in the present. This engagement work developed from my PhD research into girlhood and visual culture completed in 2018. Within the city, the project gained significant attention and visibility within the arts and education sectors.

Student education

I teach on feminism and visual culture and run a study group Tender Study exploring different kinds of feminist practices. Email me if you would like to find out more.