Dr Julie Crawshaw

Associate Professor

Department: Arts

Julie Crawshaw Photo 255 Julie has an experimental practice developed through an interdisciplinary pathway. In tandem with artists, planners, community members and others, her research explores human non-human relations towards making future plans. Funded by the Swedish Research Council, Julie is Co Investigator of ‘Stretched: Expanding Notions of Artistic Practice Through Artist-led Cultures’ (with Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg). Before academia she worked in the arts with particular interest in the role of art in social contexts and artist-led practice. This professional experience closely informs her academic work as combining scholarship and engagement.

Julie's interest in research practice began with a postgraduate in development studies. A wake up to the multiple scales of our connectedness, the programme introduced her to interdisciplinary theories and practices of development, and relational perspectives for challenging any folly of separateness. From here, she worked as an evaluation consultant for local authorities, arts councils and environment agencies. Keen to challenge policy metrics for ‘measuring’ the art experience, Julie returned to study, taking an anthropological PhD in Planning: ‘Beyond Targets: Articulating the role of art in regeneration’ (2012). Informed by Pragmatism and Actor-Network Theory the ethnography of her thesis follows the traceable connections between human and non-human actors. In this study she challenged the symbolic perspective of art in urban studies, to rather describe the making of public art as a process of knowledge production.

As an arts manager, Julie's portfolio included working as: Programme Director of Artists Newsletter (now a-n The Artists Information Company), Executive Director of Waygood Gallery & Studios (now BALTIC 39), Development Manager of Forma Arts & Media and Co Director of Midwest; alongside an independent practice as an art commissioner, evaluator and OD practitioner working with local authorities, arts councils, housing associations, environment agencies and arts organisations. During this time, she also taught on the inquiry based Manchester Sustainable Cities programme at the University of Manchester; and Managing at the Top (British Council/DfID), an experiential learning programme for senior Civil Servants of Bangladesh. Julie has presented her work at academic conferences and professional events internationally.

Campus Address

Northumbria University, City Campus
Lipman 501
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 8ST

Email Julie

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Beyond What is Finished in Practice, Crawshaw, J. 2023, In: Planning Theory and Practice
Dog Aesthetics, Crawshaw, J. 1 Jan 2023, Visual Modernities (Series title), Abingdon, Routledge
Art Worlding: Planning Relations, Crawshaw, J. 6 Jan 2022
Artist-led building: farming organic knowing, Crawshaw, J. 1 Oct 2020, In: Journal of Visual Art Practice
Transactions of an Artists' Placement: Planning Berwick upon Tweed with Sander Van Raemdonck, Crawshaw, J., Gkartzios, M. May 2020, Contemporary Art in Heritage Spaces, Taylor & Francis
Art as Rural Planning Inquiry, Crawshaw, J. 17 Jan 2019, Routledge Companion to Rural Planning, Taylor & Francis
Doing Art in the Country, Gkartzios, M., Crawshaw, J., Mahon, M. Oct 2019, In: Sociologia Ruralis
Doing Art in the Countryside: Special issue of Sociologia Ruralis, Gkartzios, M., Crawshaw, J., Mahon, M. Oct 2019
Researching Rural Housing: with an Artist in Residence, Gkartzios, M., Crawshaw, J. 1 Oct 2019, In: Sociologia Ruralis
Balance of the Island, Crawshaw, J. 31 Jul 2018, Rurality Re-Imagined, ORO Editions

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Visiting an external academic institution: University of Tokyo 2019

PGR Supervision

Crystal Jacquelyn Bennes Hermes and the Veil Essais between art, feminism, and physics Start Date: 22/11/2020 End Date: 29/09/2022
Robert Wilson Counter Tourism; The role of artistic research within rural communities in the face of over-tourism and environmental catastrophe. Start Date: 01/10/2021
Gayle Meikle Scaffolding: Towards an Erotic Curatorial Method Start Date: 04/12/2017 End Date: 21/01/2021
Claire Pencak Ways to Connect. Somatic encounters inside the Terrestrial Zone Start Date: 01/10/2017 End Date: 10/04/2022

Further Information

I am a pragmatist ethnographer who translates between artistic and social science research in the 'built environment'. Developing from my visual arts background I'm interested in the way artists, planners and arts professionals work together (or could do) and how the forms of knowledge at play can be better accounted for in scholarship, and utilised in practice.

To account for the continuity of human and non-human relations my methodology is informed by making sculpture (as an undergraduate at art school) and also classical and feminist pragmatism and scholarly kin. Funded by the AHRC and the Swedish Research Council, I have undertaken fieldwork in the UK and Sweden and published on urban and rural planning, landscape, community development and art studies.

At Northumbria University I am Senior Lecturer in Material Culture and Programme Leader of MA Creative and Cultural Industries Management. Before joining NU I held research posts at Valand Academy (University of Gothenburg) and Newcastle University. And I have also been Research Fellow at Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway; and Arts Business and Science Fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart.

Before academia I worked in the arts with particular interest in the role of art in community oriented and artist-led practice. As an arts professional my roles included: Programme Director of Artists Newsletter (now a-n The Artists Information Company), Executive Director of Waygood Gallery & Studios (now BALTIC 39), Development Manager of Forma Arts & Media and Co Director of Midwest; as well as working with local authorities, arts councils, housing associations, environment agencies and arts organisations as an independent consultant-commissioner.

Qualifications

anthropology PhD February 04 2013
Fellow HEA

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Research at Northumbria

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