Dr Elysia Lechelt
Job title:
Lecturer in Art History, Culture and Society
Office:
Room 0.48, Higgitt Gallery, Hunter Building
Office hours:
Fridays, 1pm-3pm
Biography
Elysia Lechelt is a Lecturer in the School of Art History at the University of Edinburgh. Specialising in cultural policy, her research questions how we might begin to (re)imagine cultural policy in ways that move it away from dominant imperatives and notions of cultural value and towards issues of social justice and human flourishing. Her expertise is in urban and regional cultural policy practices, creative industries, cultural labour. Additionally, she has published and presented on issues of participatory (or co-produced) cultural policy processes. Currently, Elysia is investigating how the organisation of cultural production, particularly the ways cultural work is experienced and justified, are enhancing or constricting people's real freedoms and opportunities to participate in the productions and representation of culture. She is also working to explore how arts-based practices can help shape policy aims. Prior to Academia, Elysia worked in the cultural sector in organisations like Contemporary Calgary as a manager of public programming, audience development and community outreach.
Elysia’s teaching and dissertation supervision reflects her various research interests in the cultural and creative industries, notions of cultural value, and cultural policy futures.
Her current Honours options include Art, Culture and Inequality (Fourth Year) and Inequality in the Arts: Understanding the Production and Consumption of Culture (postgraduate) seek to explore and critique the role of the arts and the culture sector in sustaining social inequalities along with the role that social inequality plays in shaping arts and cultural practices.
She also teaches at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI), delivering a course on ‘Critical Creative Diversity’ in 2023, which challenges students to think critically about current approaches to inequality in the cultural sector.
Elysia has been nominated for multiple teaching excellence awards both in Canada (2014-2016) and at the University of Edinburgh (2022).
Research
Research
Elysia’s research centres around how we might begin to (re)imagine cultural policy in ways that move it away from dominant imperatives and notions of cultural value and towards issues of social justice and human flourishing. In this vein, her work explores urban and regional cultural policy practices, policy futures, creative industries, cultural labour, cultural consumption, theories of social justice, cultural ecologies, meaningful democratic engagement, and participatory policy practices.
Elysia’s PhD “The Space for Change: Exploring a Capability Approach to Culture Policy in Calgary and Leeds” (2021) was supervised by David Lee and Kate Oakley at the University of Leeds. This work, offers a nuanced look into place-based policy development, paying particular attention to the cultural ecosystems, circumstances and structures that have influenced each city's approach to cultural policy. It then considers the space available in either city to (re)imagine and implement policy change.
Publications
Lechelt, E., & Cunningham, M. (2020). The Politics of Participation in Cultural Policy-Making. Conjunctions: Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation, 8. https://doi.org/10.7146/tjcp.v7i2.121813