Dr John Wright

Profile

I am a Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Leeds. I have previously worked as a postdoctoral research associate with the Centre for Cultural Value (CCV), as a lecturer at Leeds Arts University on the BA Fine Art, and as a module leader on the MA Critical Studies at Bradford College. In my professional life before academia, I co-founded the artist-led collective The Retro Bar at the End of the Universe. I developed a curatorial background in museums, galleries and artist-led practices. I previously worked at the British Library, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the National Media and Science Museum.

Responsibilities

• Co-convener of the PCI PLACE research group

Research interests

My main research interests are at the nexus of culture, place and policy:

• Artist-led collectives and their complex, ever-changing relationship with place and policymaking. Particularly how their internal social bonds, friendships, organisational structures and governance are both complicit and oppositional to broader power fields that pervade local cultural ecologies and the wider global cultural and creative sectors.
• Digitisation of arts and cultural festivals and what that might mean for belonging and the commons.
• Cultural Strategies.
• Ecological approaches to conceptualising cultural value.
• Arts and Environmental practices with a focus on waterways.
• Research/practice in social art school education. Particularly with reference to socially engaged artistic practices and why/how they are incubated within specific schools.

My research is interdisciplinary and branches into several specific areas of interest. I’m interested in the role of culture(s) in shaping places and the value systems that are used to understand culture-place relationships.

Qualifications

• PhD, Doctor of Philosophy
• Master of Arts in Art Gallery and Museum Studies
• Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art with Hons
• Foundation Degree in Art and Design

Student education

I teach across a wide range of modules and programmes from undergraduate to postgraduate level. I am open to supervising PhD researchers, and if you are interested in any of the above areas, please get in touch.