Exhibition Research Lab

Professor of Exhibition Research and Director of Exhibition Research Lab at Liverpool John Moores University, with a joint appointment at Liverpool Biennial, where she is Head of Research. She also holds an Honorary Associate Professorship in Curating at Aarhus University, Denmark. Previously, she served as Artistic Director of Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark, part of the curatorial team for DOCUMENTA 13, and co-curator of Liverpool Biennial 2016. She is commissioning editor of contemporary art journal Stages published by Liverpool Biennial and series editor of DATA Browser books dedicated to art, politics and technology, published by Open Humanities Press. Her research is located across contemporary art, curating, digital culture and critical theory.

Curator at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich. Birchall is currently engaged in research around socially engaged art, community art, curatorial practice and theory, exhibition histories from the 1960s onwards, and new forms of creative labour in the arts. An academic and curator of international standing, he was formerly Senior Lecturer in Exhibition Studies and Curator of Public Practice at Tate Liverpool, and has spoken widely in North America, Europe and Australia.

Adam Carr is a curator and writer, and holds the position of Senior Lecturer since 2017, lecturing in Fine Art, Art History and Exhibition Studies. From 2012 to 2017 he was Head of Exhibitions / Curator at MOSTYN I in Wales (UK). He has curated over 60 exhibitions worldwide to date – previously a guest curator for Castello di Rivoli, Museum of Contemporary Art, Torino; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; ICA, London; e-flux, New York; Nomas Foundation, Rome, Depart Foundation, Los Angeles and Arezzo City Arts Festival. Since 2017 he has been an advisor for Art Brussels, contributing editor to Mousse Magazine, CURA., and Collecteurs, New York, and member of the editorial board of The Exhibitionist. As writer, he has had over 200 texts published on art and curatorial practice, contributing to a large number of catalogues and monographs which have been published by ICA London; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore; Renne Collection, Vancouver; Liverpool Biennial; and Gamec, Bergamo among others. In 2019, he co-founded, Espacio Mango, an exhibition space and gallery in Bogota, Colombia. His research interests include contemporary art, curating and both historical and present day usages of exhibition-making.

Dr Hana Leaper holds the post of John Moores Painting Prize Senior Lecturer and Development Manager since 2017. She began to undertake research on the John Moores Painting Prize in her previous role as Paul Mellon Centre Fellow and one of the founding Editors of the prestigious born-digital journal British Art Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre, a part of Yale University. At the Centre she played an active role in the research programme, and curated the display ‘The Catalogues of the John Moores Painting Prize’ to commemorate sixty years of the competition. Dr Leaper’s wider research interests include the Grosvenor School of linocut artists, twentieth century exhibiting histories and artists’ networks, and theories of an artistic middlebrow. She is currently working on an exhibition and catalogue of Grosvenor School linocuts with Dulwich Picture Gallery, and a touring retrospective of Sybil Andrews’ work that will begin at the Glenbow, Calgary in 2019. Between 2015-2018 she was a guest lecturer on the Courtauld Institute of Art ‘Making the Modern: art and visual culture in Britain 1890-1970’ MA programme, and the Yale in London ‘Photography and the Artistic Imagination in Victorian and Edwardian Britain’ programmes.

Dr James Schofield is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art and Co-Director of Exhibition Research Lab. He is an artist, curator and researcher with specific interest in Artist-led practice.

His research is concerned with critically exploring artistic existence in relation to contemporary culture, and how this shapes curatorial and exhibitionary strategies and outputs. Following completion of his VC scholarship award winning doctoral research titled ‘The Artist-Led Condition: Reframing Self-Organisation in the Visual Arts in the UK post-2007’ at Liverpool John Moores University in 2020, he joined ERL team as Senior Lecturer and currently co-director (with Dr Christine Eyene) of the ERL gallery programme. Previously he held positions at the Henry Moore Institute (Leeds), as Manchester Editor for Corridor8 journal. Recent projects include organising the symposium What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About The Artist-Led (Exhibition Research Lab), and collaborations with the Research Pavilion (57^th Venice Biennale), Radio Kosaten, and Akibatamabi 21 (both Tokyo). Most recently Schofield has had work published in OFF_CENTREDRAFT #1 (PINK), CHAIN/MAIL Issue 3 (Corridor8), and Contemporary Research Intensive (The Contemporary Condition). His recent curated exhibitions include Conversations: Tokyo. Exhibition Research Lab, 2023, and the first solo exhibition of pioneering abstract painter and art-science artist (1927-2016) Fanchon Frohlich: The Wrong Sex (Dr Hana Leaper), in partnership with The British Art and Design Association, Exhibition Research Lab, 2023.

Christine Eyene is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art at Liverpool John Moores University with a joint post as Research Curator at Tate Liverpool. From 2012 to March 2022, she was Research Fellow in Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire where she worked on Making Histories Visible, a multidisciplinary visual arts research project led by multiple award-winner artist Lubaina Himid CBE RA. In 2023 she completed her PhD at Birkbeck, University of London, on the relationship between African literature and visual representation in the work of South African photographer George Hallett (1942-2020) under the supervision of Professor Annie E. Coombes.

Eyene’s research and curatorial practice encompass contemporary African and Diaspora arts, feminism, photography, and non-object-based art practices notably sound art. Her other interests include: socially-engaged initiatives, urban culture, music, design, and new media. Her recent exhibitions include The Plant that Stowed Away at Tate Liverpool and What the Mountain Has Seen at Exhibition Research Lab, 2025; Where to Land the Eye, as part of Landskrona Foto Festival 2024 (Konsthall, Landskrona, 2024) Seeds and Souls (Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, 2023-2024. Since 2021, she has been developing Bikoka Art Project, a new art and educational initiative dedicated to young people, women, and young creatives in the village of Bikoka (Lolodorf, Cameroon). Situated at the border of an evergreen forest, BAP focuses on the harmony between art, community, and nature. It also delves into the history and memory of the land.

PhD Researcher, LJMU funded, 2019-2023

Project title: 'How should social practice visual art from Japan be critically incorporated by Anglophone scholars, arts institutions and civil society groups

The research investigates the practical and intellectual impediments to the incorporation into Euro-American discourse of Japan’s mature and intensive field of social practice.

Jonathan Hoskins is a social practice visual artist and researcher living in London. Since 2011 he has produced long-term, interdisciplinary projects addressing the political efficacy of small scale collective action in relation to social narrative and urban change. These projects have resulted in publishing, public events, objects, text, performance, video and presentations. Each is made in collaboration with people with an expertise outside of the arts, including amateur urban ecologists, archivists, writers, boaters, and housing activists. Supporting institutions include SpaceX Exeter, Flat Time House, Open School East, Tate Exchange, Somerset House, ArtsAdmin, South London Gallery, Bloc Projects Sheffield, Market Gallery Glasgow.

PhD researcher, LJMU scholarship, 2016-21

Project title: Start-Up Cultures: Understanding the Emerging Institutional Condition of the Art World
The doctoral research investigates the impact of neoliberalism on the ongoing transformations of the expediency of contemporary cultural and art institutions. Based on the mapping of mid-scale art organisations (museums, art centres, biennials) and research clusters, the research identifies major fields of institutional culture, and goes on to investigate the exponential growth of symptomising patterns. Analysing their respective programmes, the research examines to what degree their social capital is entwined with the broader context of the growing new cultural economy.

Mara Ambrožič is a cultural critic, research curator, and expert on international cooperation strategies. She has lectured at IUAV University of Venice (2007-2012, 2017) and was a visiting lecturer at University Sciences-Po in Paris (2012). Between 2013 and 2014 she served as research curator for several projects, including the reconstruction of Marcel Broodthaers’ Section des Figures (Monnaie de Paris, 2015). Recently, she was Director of NSK State Pavilion presented during the Venice Biennale (2015-2017). She co-edited several books such as Art as a Thinking Process: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (Sternberg Press, Berlin). Founder of Libraries of the Future and associate editor of Archive Books Berlin, she is also member of Raw Material Company of Dakar, and board member of the Aufhebung Institute of Ljubljana.

PhD Researcher LJMU scholarship, 2016-21

Project title: Commoning the Biennial? A critical investigation in emerging forms of instituting biennials

The doctoral research examines the biennial imaginaries in the post-Occupy condition. It investigates recent curatorial attempts to rethink biennials as institutions in conjunction with commoning, practices of sharing and organising that articulate efforts for social relations and modes of production beyond the impasses of late capitalism.

Sevie Tsampalla has curated exhibitions addressing meeting grounds between art, social and political imaginaries, such as Fabric Spaces, Pianofabriek, Brussels (2015); small change, AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent (2013); Some Misunderstanding, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2013); sitePARAsite, RTT, Brussels (2008). She was assistant curator for Liverpool Biennial (2015-2016) and cluster-curator for Track, a city-wide exhibition organised by the contemporary art museum S.M.A.K. in Ghent (2011-2012). As founding member of the collectives Reconstruction Community and AAA, she initiated public actions and interventions respectively in Athens and Brussels (2006-2011). Together with fellow researcher James Schofield she co-founded the independent interdisciplinary research tool Exhibitions/Conversations (2017-ongoing).

PhD Researcher, 2019-2022

Project Title: Biennials as pedagogical tools

The research aims to construct a critical tool to analyse and evaluate the design and implementation of pedagogical programmes in the context of contemporary art biennials. Considered popular and one of the most dominant forms of exhibition-making in the contemporary art field, biennials are understood as hybrid cultural forms, between institutions and exhibitions, characterised by a fast-paced model of production that results in an exhibition/event and which tends to include extensive discursive programmes, generating therefore diverse bodies of knowledge. This research concerns a “third wave” of biennials (Gardner & Green, 2016) which includes those that have implemented pedagogical programmes as part of a wider art institutional strategies toward audience involvement, intellectual engagement and partnership building.

Gabriela Saenger Silva is an educator and curator, graduate of Institute of Visual Arts, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil. She was contributor to mediation and education programmes of Mercosur Visual Arts Biennial Foundation and Liverpool Biennial 2016.

PhD Researcher, 2020/23

Project Title: Monstrous subjectivities: A re-evaluation of the posthuman in born-digital storytelling

The research examines more-than-human, monstrous agents and ideas of difference in recent feminist born-digital contemporary art. Through curatorial practice the project will fabulate with the figure of the monster, circling around the construction and experience of ‘difference’. The lineage of the monster (Western Europe) is traced back to the cabinet of curiosity, miniature museums containing artefacts collected during the voyages of discovery. So-called ‘monstrous’ bodies – birth defects – were displayed as part of a curatorial scheme at the intersection of premodern ‘mythology’ and modern ‘science’. This entanglement of monstrous figures with dispossession and pathology provides a rich seam for considering historical narratives of marginalisation in dialogue with postdigital practices today. New Materialisms, a development of posthumanities, provides a generative primary field for engagement with feminist discourse on embodiment, anti-colonialism, queer theory and post anthropocentrism.

Helen Kaplinsky is a London and Helsinki based independent curator and writer with research that spans questions of postdigital identity and ownership. Most recently she curated GENDERS: Shaping and Breaking the Binary, Science Gallery London (2020). In 2015 she co-founded Res., a mutable curatorial organisation and workspace based in South East London. A recent project by Res., ‘Alembic’ (2016-18) included research into an archive of Cyberfeminist histories with partners University of Goldsmiths and ICA (London). Fellowships with the Contemporary Art Society and the Arts Council Collection both considered the relationship between property and collections. She is a trustee at Lewisham Art House and worked with Islington Mill studios on their ‘Temporary Custodians’ project, exploring alternatives to existing models of collecting. She is a visiting lecturer on Fine Art and Curating programmes in the UK and internationally.

PhD researcher, LJMU, 2021-2027

Project Title: Intersectional Feminism as Museum Intervention

Geneva Lavern Beckford’s doctoral research investigates the implementation of intersectionality and its key principles in curatorial and museum practices respectively, investigating power dynamics within institutions to investigate identity-based exclusion. Issues regarding inequality and exclusion continue to be at the centre of museum discourse and criticisms, despite significant research by feminist, decolonial, and queer theorists to highlight the links between structural inequality and the influence of colonialism, heteronormativity, and patriarchy within art history and institutions. Informed by prior feminist institutional critique, the research undertaken is concerned with identity-based exclusion and structural inequality within the museum as an artistic institution. Proposing the use of an intersectional framework to combat these issues at both an organisational and curatorial level, intersectionality is deployed as a form of institutional critique and as an analytical lens. At an organisational level, the research analyses the internal power structures and dynamics of the museum, advocating for an organisational restructuring to facilitate the necessary conditions to allow for changes to curatorial practice as well as to actively lessen the impacts of structural inequality. At the curatorial level, it explores disproportionate consequences of identity-based exclusion on those understood multiply marginalised, advocating for the use of intersectionality as way of seeing to work toward a conscious curating.

Geneva Lavern Beckford has a background in history, art history and feminist practice. Following on from her MA in Exhibition Studies (LJMU) and studies achieving a distinction grade, her research and research projects focus on implementing intersectionality as a form of institutional critique. Throughout her studies, her core beliefs have remained centered around championing for equal access and inclusion within artistic institutions for minorities – now focusing on intersectional approaches to collaborative and community-led curatorial practice with an interest in reaching further audiences.

PhD researcher, LJMU and Transart Institute, 2022-2026

Project Title: Feminist Killjoys: mapping representations of gender nonconformity in contemporary screen-based works

This doctoral project investigates screen-based works that embody forms of gender nonconformity, specifically surrounding femininity, in contemporary art practices and popular culture, highlighting the presence of different identities as a way to contradict established exclusionary narratives of cisgender normativity that deny history, representation and visibility to gender non-conforming bodies, specially relevant in a contemporary context of violence and persecution of non-binary and trans* people.

Marta Espiridião is a curator and researcher and currently a PhD researcher at Transart Institute / Liverpool John Moores University, and the recipient of a full FCT PhD Scholarship. Her curatorial work and research interests ranges from feminist and queer theory, architecture, magic, speculative fiction and contemporary art. Latest exhibitions and programmes include “Artifício” (2023), a solo show by Odete in the Municipal Galleries of Lisbon; collective exhibition and public programme “Error 417: Expectation Failed” (2021-2), Oporto Municipal Gallery; and Andreia Santana’s “Sonic Materialities” (2020), ARTES Porto. Among several independent curatorial projects, is highlighted “Bodies in Space – critical archive of non-normative experiences of the city” (Lisbon), a sonic space to re-think the place of non-normative bodies within urban landscapes, their relations to common surroundings, and how the city exerts discriminatory violence over identities and bodies.

• ‘Flickering Monstrosity’ Hypertext Reading Group, series developed by Helen Kaplinsky 2018 to 2019
• Open Forum: on artist-led, series developed by James Schofield
• Contemporary Research, in partnership with Aarhus University, Denmark and Research Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2017
• Excessive Research, in partnership with Aarhus University, Denmark, and Transmediale Festival for Art and Digital Culture, Berlin, 2015 to 2016

Keynotes

Krysa, J., Korean Pavilion 30^th Anniversary Exhibition at Venice Biennale 2024, Arts Council Korea and ARKO Art Center, Panel Title (Post) Anthropocene Institutions - Is Another World Possible?, Venice June 2024.

Krysa, J., SVA (School of Visual Arts) New York, panel Algorithmic State: Between the Curatorial and Computation, with Nora Khan, Helen Starr, Isin Onor, 6 April 2024.

Schofield, J. Artist-Led Self-Organisation in the UK. The Bananafish Books, Shanghai.

Krysa, J., Expo-Facto: Into the Algorithm of Exhibition, Helsinki, University of the Arts Helsinki, with Bassam El Baroni, Henk Slagter, Mick Willson, 27 October 2022.

Krysa, J. Annual Conference of Spanish Researchers in the UK, Liverpool University, keynote title: Curating Now: curating in the age of globalisation, biennalisation, and Artificial Intelligence, June 2019.

2015. Krysa, J, 'The Politics of Contemporary Curating: a Technological Perspective', chapter in The Routledge Companion to Art and Politics, Randy Martin (ed.), Routledge.

Talks and panels

Biennale Internationale de Casablanca, panel ‘Biennials in Africa and around the world', with Christine Eyene (Biennale Internationale de Casablanca 2022-23), with Siham Weigant (Dakar Biennale 2022), Yann Mazéas (MO.CO. Ecole des Beaux Arts de Montpellier), moderator Art Africa, American Arts Center, 19 November 2022

Beautiful World, Where Are You?, programme of talks curated by The Serving Library, in partnership with Liverpool Biennial 2018

Design and Empire, curated by Emily King, Prem Krishnamurthy, Joasia Krysa, in partnership with Liverpool Biennial and RIBA North, 2017

The Biennial Condition: On Contemporaneity and the Episodic, in partnership with Aarhus University and Liverpool Biennial 2016

Curating Now: curating in the age of globalisation, biennalisation, and Artificial Intelligence.

Keynote, Krysa, J. Annual Conference of Spanish Researchers in the UK, Liverpool University, June 2019, UK.

Beautiful World, Where Are You?, programme of talks curated by The Serving Library, in partnership with Liverpool Biennial 2018

Design and Empire, curated by Emily King and Prem Krishnamurthy, in partnership with Liverpool Biennial and RIBA North, 2017

The Biennial Condition: On Contemporaneity and the Episodic, in partnership with Aarhus University and Liverpool Biennial 2016

What the Mountain Has Seen: Shiraz Bayjoo, Joy Gregory, Yvon Ngassam, Jean David Nkot, Boris Nzebo and Freya Tewelde, Exhibition Research Lab, curated by Eyene, C., 7 Feb – 31 Oct 2025.

Fanchon Frohlich: The Wrong Sex, Exhibition Research Lab, curated by Schofield, J., Leaper, H., Liverpool, 17 Feb 2022 – 14 May 2023.

Conversations: Tokyo. Exhibition Research Lab, curated by Schofield, J. Liverpool, 5 Oct – 1 Dec, 2023.

John Moores Painting Prize China Residency Exhibition: Work by the 2020 & 2022 winning artists, Exhibition Research Lab, curated by Leaper, H., Schofield J, Roberts A, Liverpool, 11 Sep 2023 – 16 Sep 2023.

Queer Imaginaries, Helen Pritchard, Winnie Soon, Exhibition Research Lab, LJMU, November 2019 – February 2020. 

Quantum Real: Art and Particles, featuring Matthew Willson and Jol Thompson, curated by Lars Bang Larsen and Joasia Krysa, 2018/2019

The John Moores Painting Prize and the Rise of the Sixties in Liverpool, curated by Hanna Leaper, 2019

The Serving Library, and Paul Elliman’s Vauxhall Astra 2020, part of Liverpool Biennial 2018

Catch | Bounce: towards a relational ontology of the digital in art practice, James Charlton, doctoral project and exhibition, 2017

HFT The Gardener by Suzanne Treister, part of Liverpool Biennial 2016

2025. Krysa, J., Tyzlik-Carver, M., eds. Curating Superintelligences. Curating, Artificial Intelligence, Speculative Futures, Data Browser vol 10, London: Open Humanities Press.

2025. Krysa, J. Curatorial Authorship, in Bloomsbury Encyclopaedia of New Media, ed. Vince Dziekan, London: Bloomsbury.

2025. Eyene, C., “Where an artist finds freedom”, in “Paris Noir: Artistic circulations and anti-colonial resistance, 1950-2000”, edited by Alicia Knock. Paris: Centre Pompidou.

2024. Eyene, C., “South African Exile and Diasporic Cultural Transmission” in Globalisto: A Philosophy in Flux – Acts of an Imbizo, edited by Ntshepe Tsekere Bopape and Alexandre Quoi (eds). Paris: Presses du Réel.

2023 Krysa J. Petronella Gronros (eds.), New Directions May Emerge, Handbook Helsinki Biennial 2023, Helsinki: Helsinki Art Museum and Helsinki Biennial.

2023 Krysa, J. (Commissioning Editor), Bassam El Baroni, Patrizia Constantin (Editors), The Helsinki Biennial Art Mediation Forum 2023: An Anthology, published by HAM Helsinki Art Museum.

2022. Krysa, J. Impett L. ‘Rethinking Curating in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,’ in Expo-Facto: Into the Algorithm of Exhibition, ed. Henk Slager, Mick Wilson, Utrecht: Metropolis M Books; in HumaniTies and Artificial Intelligence, ed. Freddy Paul Grunert, Published by Noema Media and Publishing, European Union, ISBN: 978-88-943827-2-3

2022. Eyene, C., “Tracey Rose: Within and Beyond (Black) Feminism” in “Tracey Rose: Shooting Down Babylon”, edited by Koyo Kouoh. Cape Town: Zeitz MOCAA.

2021. Krysa, J., Moscoso, M., eds. ‘The Next Biennial Should be Curated by a Machine’, Stages, Vol. 9/2021, Liverpool Biennial. ISSN 2399-9675. http://www.biennial.com/journal/issue-9

2022. Eyene, C., “Composing with Paint and Sound. Christine Eyene in Conversation with Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska”, in Lubaina Himid edited by Michael Wellen. London: Tate Publishing, 2021.

2020. Eyene, C., “Curating from a Black Female Perspective” in Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms, edited by Katy Deepwell. Amsterdam: Valiz.

2020. Krysa, J., “Exhibitionary practices at the intersection of academic research and public display”, chapter in Institution as Praxis – New Curatorial Directions for Collaborative Research, Rito, C., Balaskas B. (eds.), Sternberg Press.

2020. Birchall, M., “The Role of Public Practice in the Museum”, chapter in Institution as Praxis – New Curatorial Directions for Collaborative Research, Rito, C., Balaskas B. (eds.), Sternberg Press.

2020, Birchall, M., “A History of Socially Engaged Art and the Expanded Field of Public Art Production.”, In More Art in the Public Eye, edited by Micaela Martegani, Emma Elizabeth Drew, and Jeffrey Aaron Kasper. New York: Duke University Press.

2018. Krysa J., Birchall M., (et al), Contemporary Research Intensive, in Contemporary Condition series (Cox, Lund eds.), Volume 10, Berlin: Sternberg Press, ISBN 978-3-95679-391-2.

2019. Krysa, J., ‘Museum and Museum Studies in Nordic Countries’, chapter in Perspective, Institute national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, issue 1/2019, ed. Judith Delfiner. ISSN: 1777-7852. https://journals.openedition.org/perspective/10306l’Institut

2018. Krysa, J., editor, ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You?’, Stages, Vol. 8/2018. Liverpool Biennial. ISSN 2399-9675.

2017. Birchall, M., Situating Participatory Art between Process and Practice.” ARKEN Journal 7 (2017): 56–74.

2017. Birchall, M., “The Precarious Nature of Curatorial Work.” In Who Runs the Artworld: Money, Power and Ethics, edited by Brad Buckley and John Conomos. Faringdon: LibriPublishing.

2017. Birchall, M., Cox,G., Krysa, J., Lund, Contemporary Research Intensive, Contemporary Condition series (ed. Cox, Lund), Sternberg Press.

Systemics, or Exhibition as a Series, (ed.) Krysa J., Sternberg Press.

2017. Krysa, J.,‘Exhibitionary practices at the intersection of academic research and public display’, in Futures of Artistic Research (eds. Seppä A, Slager H, Kaila J.), University of the Arts Helsinki.