Miriam Hancill
Programme:
Art - PhD/MPhil
Start date:
Sep-21
Mode of study:
Full time
Research title:
Obdurate matter? Unfolding potential in materials, apparatuses, and procedures of printmaking through speculative practice
Biography
Miriam is an artist and practice-based PhD candidate based in the School of Art at ECA, funded by the Edinburgh College of Art PhD Scholarship.
Her research project Obdurate matter? Unfolding potential in materials, apparatuses, and procedures of printmaking through speculative practice takes an experimental, reflexive approach to printmaking. Through material interrogation, the research explores how the media and processes of the field can offer alternative procedural and conceptual approaches within contemporary print practices.
Miriam's research project is strongly connected to her artistic practice, which teases out the generative sensations of printmaking through material-led inquiry. It makes explicit the media, tools, decisions, and actions of the printmaker within the workshop setting – harnessing print's inherent uncertainty, and adopting a practical methodology driven by processual awkwardness. Textiles play an important role in her work, their malleability and scale providing points of potential through which the conventions of the discipline can begin to be unpicked.
Miriam holds an MFA in Contemporary Art Practice from Edinburgh College of Art (2020), and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Newcastle University (2015).
Research interests
- Printmaking
- Installation Art
- Materiality
- Artistic Labour
- New Materialism
- Surface
- Process
- Arts Education
- Print Pedagogies
Miriam currently teaches on the Environmental Practices course in ESALA at ECA, and has taught into modules in Art Practice and Contemporary Art Theory within the School of Art.
She has delivered practical printmaking workshops and artist talks at Edinburgh College of Art (2024-25), Leith School of Art, Edinburgh (2021), Newcastle University (2020), and the University of Sunderland (2016).
From 2022-2023 Miriam was a PGR Student Rep for the School of Art. In this role, she co-organised and ran ECA's first PhD Showcase, which brought together the work of PhD students across Art, Design, ESALA, History of Art, and Music. The showcase is now included in ECA's yearly events programme.
Research
Research
Selected research outputs:
In 2025 Miriam presented her research at the Weaving, Language, Writing: thinking and practicing research creation international conference, organized by the University of Angers (EA 3LAM), University Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis (EA TransCrit), University of Lorraine, and University of Grenoble Alpes (EA Litt&Arts). The conference focussed on the intersections of creative and critical practices in research-creation, and aimed to explore how language, writing, and artistic methods can shape and communicate knowledge across disciplines.
She was also awarded a Jerwood X DCA funded artistic residency at the Dundee Contemporary Arts print studio.
In 2022 Miriam contributed to the IMPACT 12 Printmaking Conference, The Printmaker's Voice, where she presented her academic paper Monoprint: an opening up of printness? She also spoke alongside ECA PhD colleagues Rachel Adams, Sandra De Rycker and Elizabeth Tomos in the panel To Print or Not to Print - Epistemological, Methodological and Practical Issues of the PhD in print, chaired by Dr Ruth Pelzer-Montada.
Hancill, M. (2023) “Monoprint: an opening up of ‘printness’?”, IMPACT Printmaking Journal, (1), p. 18. doi: 10.54632/22.7.IMPJ6.