Job title: Senior Lecturer, Visual Culture

Tel: +44 (0)131 651 5885

Email: a.mcclanahan@ed.ac.uk

Office address: North-East Studio Building

Contact time: Tuesday, 2-4pm

Research: See Dr Angela McClanahan-Simmons on Edinburgh Research Explorer

​Originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA, my educational background is in archaeology and anthropology.  I was a University Teacher at Glasgow University from 2003-8, and a Lecturer in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at Leeds University in 2007-8 before taking up my current post at ECA. In addition to my teaching and research interests, I frequently write for art exhibitions and exhibition catalogues, I am a trustee for Rhubaba Gallery in Edinburgh, and am a member of the editorial collective of the peer reviewed journal Visual Culture in Britain.​

​Angela is course organiser for Material Cultures (Stage 3); Exploring Cultural Landscapes I: Field Lab (MSc); Things: New Materialisms (MA). She also contributes to Art Now (Stage 2), Visual Culture Research Project (Stage 4) and Art PhD Research Methods, as well as teaching on ethics in various capacities at ECA.

​​​​My primary research interests include examining how people engage with and construct meaning from the material world, and how the things and places we make and use are experienced, interpreted, ordered and displayed to construct narratives of historic and contemporary cultures in museums, galleries, landscape, bodily, contemporary art and cinematic contexts. I am also interested in ideas about the material culture of the recent and deep past, and their relationships to politics, displacement, presents and futures, and ethical practices in contemporary art and anthropology. 

Current PhD students

PhD Supervision Topics

Accepting applications.

​Material culture; materiality/materialism; landscape and place; contemporary archaeology; anthropology and art.

Related links

Atelier: Creative Arts and the Social Sciences Network

Capital Ruins

Material / Techne / Materialisms