Dr Francesca Berry BA MA PhD (University College London)

• BA History of Art with History (University College London)
• MA History of Art (University College London)
• PhD History of Art (University College London)

I am an art historian and Associate Professor of History of Art. I joined the University of Birmingham in 2005 as Lecturer in History of Art having previously lectured at University of Warwick, Birkbeck, and University College London. I studied for my BA, MA and PhD History of Art in the Department of History of Art at University College London and then proceeded to an AHRC post-doctoral research fellowship in the Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior at the Royal College of Art, Royal Holloway, and Victoria & Albert Museum. Between 2013 and 2016 I was Head of the Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies at University of Birmingham and took this role up again in 2017-18. I have been an Editor of the Oxford Art Journal, published by Oxford University Press, since 2010 and was Chair of its editorial group from 2017 to 2022. From 2022 to 2025 I was Head of Research for the School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music.

I contribute to many aspects of History of Art undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, most notably the modules:

• LH/LM Paris Moderne 1850-1930: Image, Concept, Femininity
• LH/LM Inside Out: Interior and Interiority in French Art, Design and Culture 1860-1940
• LI Impressionism and After: Art and Society 1870-1900
• LI Real and Ideal: Art and Society in Mid Nineteenth-Century France
• LM Criticism and Methods

I welcome enquiries from prospective postgraduate students wishing to research any subject that overlaps with my research and teaching interests.

Current Postgraduate Research Supervision

PhD
Matthew French, 'The Limits of Legibility: Modernism and the Critical Edge of Caricature and the Caricatural 1881-1900'.

Benoit Guérillot, 'Proust, Bonnard and Deleuze's Theory of Signs' (second supervisor).

Erica Tso, ‘Moga as the Epitome of Interwar Japanese Femininity: A Comparative Study of Print Culture in Japan and Britain’.

Previous Postgraduate Research Supervision

PhD
Rebecca Savage, ‘Redesigning Modernism: Opportunities for Female Autonomy with the World of Poster Design (1918-39)’ (AHRC Midlands 4 Cities Doctoral Award) with Dr Richard Hornsey (University of Nottingham).

Cai Lyons, ‘Networks of Modernism: a feminist and geopolitical analysis of Mary Swanzy (1882 – 1978)’ (University of Birmingham CAL Doctoral Scholarship; Haywood Doctoral Scholarship).

Hannah Halliwell ‘Morphine Addicts in Fin-de-Siècle French Visual Culture: Art, Medicine, Sexuality and Femininity’ (AHRC Midlands 4 Cities Doctoral Award) with Dr Ting Chang (University of Nottingham) and Dr Camilla Smith (University of Birmingham). PhD awarded 2020.

Sara Tarter 'Commercialising Culture: The Display of Art in French, British and American Department Stores (1875-1914) (University of Birmingham CAL Doctoral Scholarship). PhD awarded 2019.

Alison Hall ‘The Shelter Photographs 1968-72, Nick Hedges: The Representation of the Homeless Child and a Photographic Archive’ (AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award) with Prof Ian Grosvenor and Dr Sian Roberts. PhD awarded 2016.

Richenda Roberts ‘”Patriotism is not enough”: Visual responses to Pacifism and Feminism in Britain during World War One’ (AHRC Doctoral Award) with Dr Jutta Vinzent. PhD awarded 2013.

MA by Research
Mattias Vendelmans 'Pelle Swedlund, A Swedish Symbolist Painter in Bruges'.

MRes
Jon Stevens ‘Shadows and Silence Under Glass: Fernand Khnopff, Henri Le Sidaner and Frank Brangwyn’s fin-de-siècle Visions of Bruges’.

MPhil
Hannah Carroll ‘Travels Through Text and Image: Estella Canziani’s ‘Costumes, Traditions and Songs of Savoy’ (AHRC Research Preparation Masters Award) with Dr Camilla Smith. MPhil awarded 2013.

Kathryn Murray ‘Self-Ordering Creativity and an Independent Work Space. Edna Clark-Hall’s Poem Pictures’ (AHRC Research Preparation Masters Award). MPhil awarded 2012.

Elin Morgan ‘The Studio Practice of Jacob Epstein as revealed by an examination of selected contemporaneous photographs and a selection of his sculptural fragments’ (AHRC Research Preparation Masters Award). MPhil awarded 2012.

My research is analytically and inclusively feminist, object-based, intermedial and interdisciplinary. I interrogate and produce published and curated social histories of art and art making in France during the period 1848 to 1940 through the disciplinarily marginalised intepretational categories of women, femininity and domesticity. I am recognised as a world-leading expert on modern visual cultures of domesticity, including mass-mediated domesticities produced by magazines, advertising and consumer exhibitions. Equally, I am recognised as a world-leading expert on the art and practices of Edouard Vuillard, the Nabis, and related Parisian avant-garde formations circa 1900. Recently, I have started a new major research project on the Paris art worlds made and unmade by migrant women art workers 1900-1940 and, relatedly, a book project on the Parisian studio domesticities of migrant women art workers in the period.

My monograph, Edouard Vuillard, the Nabis, and the Politics of Domesticity was published January 2025 by Bloomsbury Academic/Bloomsbury Visual Arts in the Material Culture of Art and Design series. It is the first book-length feminist engagement with Vuillard and Intimisme. In it I overcome the structural repression of domesticity, femininity and women's creative agency in histories of male artists' avant-garde practice.

I was guest curator to the international loan exhibition ‘Maman: Vuillard and Madame Vuillard’ at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, October 2018 to January 2019. With Mathias Chivot of the Archives Vuillard, Paris, I was co-author of the exhibition’s fully-illustrated catalogue, Maman: Vuillard and Madame Vuillard, published 2018 by Paul Holberton Publishing. I have made contributions to several other exhibition catalogues including ones published in France, Italy, and the US.

I have co-edited two journal special issues: 'Feminist Domesticities', published 2017 as a special issue of Oxford Art Journal; and 'Publishing the Modern Home', published 2005 as a special issue of Journal of Design History. Currently, I am co-editing with Dr Rachel Coombes (University of Cambridge) a special issue of Dix-Neuf journal on the subject of 'Nabi Intermediality', for expected publication in 2027.

I am in the process of building two research projects: 'Marginal or Integral? The Paris Art Worlds Made and Unmade by Migrant Women Art Workers 1900-1940' and ‘Nabi Politics: Art at the Vanguard of Debate after 1888’. 

I have been researcher on four RCUK funded collaborative research projects: as co-investigator to AHRC Suburban Birmingham: Spaces and Places, 1880-1960 (University of Birmingham, Birmingham Museums Trust, Library of Birmingham, 2009-2012); to an AHRC Art History Research Network; and as postdoctoral research fellow at AHRB Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior (Royal College of Art, Victoria & Albert Museum, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2001-2003). I was Principal Investigator and lead supervisor to the successfully completed AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award ‘Displaying Childhood Spaces’.

I have held several external professional roles, including:

• I am a member of the editorial group of Oxford Art Journal and was previously Chair from 2017 to 2022. Oxford Art Journal is published by Oxford University Press.
• I have been external peer reviewer for the AHRC; Oxford Art Journal; Art History; Architectural History; Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture; Object; Bloomsbury Academic; Manchester University Press; Duke University Press.
• I have been external examiner to the BA History of Art programmes at the University of Bristol, the Masters History of Art programme at University of Nottingham and the undergraduate Humanities programme at Imperial College, London.

At University of Birmingham I have held the following academic management and administration roles:

• Head of Research, School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music (2022-2025)
• Head of Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies (2013–2016; 2017-18)
• College of Arts and Law Director of Joint Honours Liaison and Extenuating Circumstances (2011-2013)
• College of Arts and Law Joint Honours Extenuating Circumstances Panel Chair (2011-2013) and Member (2010-2011)
• Head of Student Development and Support, School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music (2009-2011)
• School of Historical Studies Mitigations Panel Member (2006-2010)
• Departmental REF Reading Group Member (2015-2016; 2022-)
• Departmental Director of Undergraduate Studies (2013-2016; 2017-2020)
• Departmental Staff Student Committee Chair (2005-2013; 2019-)
• Departmental Welfare Officer (2005-2010)
• Departmental Undergraduate Admissions Tutor (2005-2007; 2015-2016).
• Departmental Study Abroad Tutor (2017-2018)