Katja Martin-Rettberg
Programme:
History of Art - MPhil/PhD/MSc by Research
Start date:
Sep-20
Mode of study:
Full time
Research title:
Arts organisations and emerging cultural capital in Manchester: A visual study
Biography
Katja Martin-Rettberg is a second year PhD researcher in History of Art at The University of Edinburgh. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History of Art and French from the University of Glasgow (2018), and an MA in Arts Management, Policy and Practice from the University of Manchester (2019).
Since October 2021, Katja is a PGR History of Art Student Representative at Edinburgh College of Art. She is also a SGSAH Doctoral Research Committee Member for the Creative Economies Hub since March 2021.
One of her personal strengths is public speaking, thanks to past positions as a Tour Guide at The Hunterian (Glasgow, 2018) and Lecturer/Guide at Victor Hugo’s House (Guernsey, 2020). She was interviewed by BBC Guernsey on several occasions to speak on behalf of Victor Hugo’s House.
She is fluent in French, German and Spanish, and has been thoroughly trained in Translation during her UG and past positions as Curatorial Assistant at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House in Manchester (2019) and Victor Hugo’s House in Guernsey (2020).
Katja Martin-Rettberg’s current research project is an inter-disciplinary visual study of emerging forms of cultural capital of arts organisations in Manchester. This project is covered by a cross-disciplinary supervisory team from the Arts and Social Sciences, and draws from the fields of Urban Visual Studies, Cultural Policy and Gentrification.
In a creative economy and an increasingly global world, this project explores existing social inequalities within the arts sector through the lens of class and gender. It proposes a visual focus on the cityscape, drawing from Peterson's omnivore-theory on the rise of eclecticism (1996). This is studied through the use of visual imagery employed by arts organisations in Manchester. The overall aim of studying emerging cultural capital visually is to make cultural production and consumption more equitable and diverse.