Emily Clarkson is a PhD candidate in History of Art, supervised across Edinburgh College of Art and the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Her doctoral project analyses the impact and legacy of Japanese born women artists working transnationally since the 1960s, with reference to performance and the emergence of intermedia. Specific focus of this research is the continuing live art practice of Takako Saitō (b.1929), through which Emily analyses her work and its intersection with pedagogy, caretaking, and invisible labour. Her methods combine conventional art historical research with feminist theory and embodied learning. She recently curated a display of Saitō’s performance ephemera and related self-documentation at the Edinburgh College of Art library and developed a series of complementary reenactment workshops based on these archival fragments. Alongside her research Emily works as an archivist for Saitō's personal archive, preparing the collection for public access in the form of a digital living archive. In 2025 Emily was named an Ishibashi Foundation fellow in Japanese Art by the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures.

Prior to commencing her doctoral research Emily received her undergraduate MA from the University of Edinburgh in 2018, where she focused her research on theatre in post-1945 experimental photography from Japan. She received her postgraduate double MA in Art History and Japanese from SOAS in 2023, where her thesis explored themes of transnationalism, collaborative performance, and new technologies in Red, White, Yellow, Black’s ‘Multimedia Concerts’ (1972-73). Between her undergraduate and postgraduate studies Emily worked full-time as a teacher and continues to facilitate arts related workshops for all ages.