Alexandra teaches topics on art theory and practice, covering Modern, Postmodern, and Contemporary art. 

Modules taught

Undergraduate

U65595 Major Project (3rd year, Theory element)

U65571 Critical Essay (3rd year, Extended essay supervision, Module Leader)

U65503 Modernism and Avant-gardes (1st year)

Postgraduate

P65503 Fine Art Theory 1: Topics in Contemporary Fine Art Culture

P65504 Fine Art Theory 2: Extended Critical Essay

Research grants and awards

Duncan Grant's Scoll, In Focus project, funded by Tate. 

Research projects

Alexandra is currently completing her a monograph, The Hydropathe Club (1878-1880): Anti-Art and Youth Counter-Culture in Nineteenth-Century France. This is adapted from her PhD thesis, which examined the cultural and historical contexts of the proto-anti-art collective, Les Hydropathes. 

She is also working on a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project looking at working class contributions to the avant-garde in twentieth-century Britain. 

She recently completed a collaborative research project examining Duncan Grant's Abstract Kinetic Collage Painting. This was part of a Tate 'In Focus' commission. 

Books

• Trott A, Ed., Across the Great Divide: Modernism's Intermedialities from Futurism to Fluxus, Cambridge Scholars Press (2014)
  ISBN: 9781443854788
  

Book chapters

• Trott A, 'Hydropathe caricature: Satirical portraits in France's early Third Republic' in Meijer Drees M, de Leeuw S (ed.), The Power of Satire, John Benjamins Publishing (2015)
  ISBN: 9789027202291
  Abstract As a young ‘bohemian’ collective, the Cercle des Hydropathes was characterised by frivolous humour indicative of the liberal social changes in France’s early Third Republic. This chapter considers how the Cercle des Hydropathes’ republican community was personified in humorous portraits on the cover of its journal L’Hydropathe. It argues that in satirising the club’s collective image, Georges Lorin’s caricatures coherently portrayed the artists through an image that promoted Republican liberty as a stable ideal. Instead of rallying support for liberal social progression, their club created an environment allowing Parisian intellectuals to engage with the way of life that Republican liberties made possible.Website
• Alex Trott, 'Dynamism and Design in the Ballets Suedois's 'L'Homme et son desir'' in Christopher Townsend, Alex Trott, Rhys Davies (ed.), Across the Great Divide: Modernism's Intermedialities from Futurism to Fluxus, Cambridge Scholars Press (2014)
  ISBN:
  

Other publications

• Alexandra Trott, 'Waves of Painted Stone: Abstraction and Materiality in the Art of Duncan Grant'
  (2016)
  ISSN: eISSN:
  

Areas of expertise

Responding to her interest in contemporary art practice, Alexandra has worked with contemporary artist Eloise Hawser to help produce exhibitions for Tate Britain (Weight of Data, May-October 2015), the New Museum, New York (2015 Triennial: Surround Audience), and the ICA, London (Lives on Wire, June-September 2015).

Conferences

Selected Conference Papers

June 2017, ‘Bloomsbury’s Kinetic Body: the Ballets of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell”. International Virginia Woolf Society Conference, University of Reading.  

June 2017, ‘“A Demon Dwelt in Him”: Madness, Consumption, and the Intangible Art of Fumisterie’. The City as Modernist Ephemera Conference, School of Arts & Creative Industries, LSBU. (Invited Speaker)  

February 2017, ‘Transit Vans and Origami Swans’. Visual Cultures Research Forum, Queen Mary, University of London. (Invited Speaker)  

December 2016, ‘“A Lion in the Skin of an Ass”: Fumist Paris and the Birth of Anti-Art’. Historical Modernisms symposium, Senate House, University of London 

August 2014, ‘The Cercle des Hydropathes: A Liberal Utopia?’. European Network of Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, University of Helsinki, International Conference 

April 2014, ‘Your Body as My Canvas: Collective Identity and the Hydropathe Body in the Early Third Republic’. Modernist Communities International Conference, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III 

January 2013, ‘Humour, satire and the denial of political cause in Parisian bohemian art’. University of Utrecht, Faculty of Humanities, Satire Across Borders International Conference 

September 2012, ‘Battle in Bohemia: The Hydropathe Club as Social Protest in the Early Third Republic’. University of Kent, Centre for the Study of Social and Political Movements, Theory, Action and Impact of Social Protest.

Selected Event Organising

‘Modernism & Ritual’, Research Panel at the European Network of Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies (EAM), hosted by the University of Helsinki, Finland. Organised and chaired with Dr Essi Viitanen (UCL), August 2014.

Conference Panel organiser: ‘Modernism’s Intermedialities from Futurism To Fluxus’, Research Panel at the Association of Art Historians (AAH) conference hosted by the Open University, Kent. Co-organised and chaired with Professor Christopher Townsend and Rhys Davies (RHUL), March 2012.

Convenor of ‘Future of Arts Research’, One-day postgraduate conference, funded by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, RHUL, held at the British Library, November 2011.

Other experience

Teaching Fellow, Department of French, Queen Mary University of London, 2013-2015.

Associate Lecturer, Department of Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2011-2015.

Further information

Insta: @brookesfineart