Dr Imogen Hart
PhD (York), MA (York), BA (Hons) (UCL)
Lecturer in History of Art
School of Education, Humanities and Languages
Role
Dr Imogen Hart specialises in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British art, with a particular focus on the Arts and Crafts movement. Her research and teaching interests encompass craft, design, interiors, sculpture, curating, exhibition history, the relationship between art and science, critical approaches to art history, and the histories of British art. She teaches across the programme and supervises undergraduate dissertations. She is an Academic Advisor and serves as a Joint Honours champion for the School of Education, Humanities and Languages.
Teaching and supervision
Courses
Modules taught
- Making and Meaning in Art (module leader)
- Advanced Seminar: Victorian Art and Design (module leader)
- Approaches, Curatorial Practice
- Field Work in Art History
- Themes in Modern Art (module leader)
- Museums and Society
- Art and the Environment (module leader)
Research
Dr Imogen Hart has published extensively on the history of the Arts and Crafts movement, including the book Arts and Crafts Objects (Manchester University Press, 2010), and a collection of essays co-edited with Jason Edwards, Rethinking the Interior, c. 1867-1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts (Ashgate, 2010). Her work on twentieth-century craft has appeared in Winterthur Portfolio and the Journal of Modern Craft.
Dr Hart’s research on the history of sculpture includes a volume co-edited with Claire Jones, Sculpture and the Decorative in Britain and Europe, Seventeenth Century to Contemporary (Bloomsbury, 2020), which brings to the forefront makers, objects, and spaces that have been marginalized by the enforcement of boundaries between fine and decorative art. A special issue of Art History, titled ‘British Art and the Global’, which she co-edited with Dorothy Price, examines the implications of challenging the institutional division of the discipline into fields defined by national borders. Dr Hart’s current projects include a book, Critical Histories of the Arts and Crafts Movement (forthcoming from Manchester University Press, 2026), which she is co-editing with Dr Thomas Cooper (Lincoln College Oxford).
Her research has been supported by various prestigious organisations, including the AHRC, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Association for Art History, and the Henry Moore Foundation, among others.
Professional information
Memberships of professional bodies
- Association for Art History
- Design History Society
- Historic Interiors Affiliated Group of the Society of Architectural Historians
Conferences
- Design History Society Conference, Canterbury, September 2024
- Queer(ing) Space(s), Society of Antiquaries of London, October 2024
Further details
Dr Imogen Hart is one of the Editors of the Journal of Modern Craft. She is First Vice-President of the William Morris Society in the United States and Sub-Secretary of the Historic Interiors Affiliate Group of the Society of Architectural Historians.