Artist PhDs: are they worth it?

They're increasingly popular, but are artist PhDs worth the time and money? We speak to three artists with PhDs—Sophie Hope, Nathan Walker + Jade de Monserrat about their own PhD experiences, and life after graduation!

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Sophie Hope is a practice- based researcher. Her work is often developed with others through the format of devised workshops exploring subjects such as art and politics, physical and emotional experiences of work, stories of socially engaged art and the ethics of employability in the creative industries. Sophie carried out her doctorate at Birkbeck, University of London in cultural democracy and the commissioning of art to effect social change from 2006-11. She was an independent curator for 10 years, working locally and internationally to develop a collaborative, socially engaged curatorial practice. On completing her PhD she worked as a full-time academic, developing her practice-based research and teaching on the MA Arts Policy and Management at Birkbeck from 2010-2023. She has been in post as the Lecturer in Socially Engaged Practices at Guildhall School of Music and Drama since February 2024 where she is co-developing the Guildhall De-Centre for Socially Engaged Practice and Research. 

Nathan Walker is an artist and writer whose practice spans performance art, video and poetry. Currently Course Lead Fine Art, Senior Lecturer in Performance, Moving Image and Installation at York St John University, they have presented work nationally and internationally, exploring the use of the vocal-body in durational performance. Nathan's artistic practice is rooted in experimental language-based practices that are also realised as page-based and book length poetry. Their book 'Condensations' (2017) was published with Uniformbooks and is an expanded visual-text for vocal performance following a residency at the Armitt Museum and Gallery in Ambleside, Cumbria. They are also have presented poetry in reading series and festivals nationally and exhibited poetry at the National Poetry Library, London.

Jade de Montserrat was the recipient of the Stuart Hall Foundation Scholarship supporting her PhD and the development of her work from her Black Diasporic perspective in the North of England. de Montserrat works through performance, drawing, painting, film, installation, sculpture, print and text. In 2020, Iniva and Manchester Art Gallery commissioned her as the first artist for the Future Collect project, with a solo exhibition Constellations: Care and Resistance at Manchester Art Gallery (2020 – 2022). In 2021, she participated in a group exhibition An Infinity of Traces at Lisson Gallery, and opened a solo exhibition In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens at Bosse & Baum Gallery, London. In 2022, she was included in the group exhibition Body Vessel Clay,  at Two Temple Place, London, and York Art Gallery (2022), and A Tall Order! – Rochdale Art Gallery in the 1980s, at Touchstones, Rochdale (2023). Most recently she had a solo exhibition titled Soul of Fire, Old Parcels Office Artspace, Scarborough (2023). In 2023 the artist co-launched Soul of Fire Artists’ Charcoal to make the material accessible to schools and communities. de Montserrat will be launching Cracks in the Curriculum 5 with Serpentine Education and also participating in Towards New Worlds at MIMA, Middlesbrough later in 2024. Jade de Montserrat is a Tutor at Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, and an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London.

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