Tel. No. 0044(0)2076316129
Dr. Koureas completed his PhD at Birkbeck (funded by a three year AHRC grant) where he has been teaching since 2000. His teaching concentrates on visual and material cultural from the late 19th century to the present day with special emphasis on memory, gender, race and national identity and their intersections.
Current research interests
Koureas’ research interests are in the relationship of memory, conflict and commemoration in the construction of National and gender identities. His past research and published monograph Memory, Masculinity and National Identity in British Visual Culture, 1914-1930, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) concentrate on the commemoration of the First World War in relation to the visual culture of the 1920s and offers an innovative way of looking at ways in which intimacy, cultural expressions of sexuality, emotion and affect are encoded in diverse forms in visual culture and commemorative objects with particular emphasis on the performative nature of gender and various sites of memory.
Current research interests concentrate on issues of representation of conflict and its commemoration in the museum space, the city and memorial sites with special emphasis on postcolonial memory and gender as well as the possibilities of reconciliation offered through visual culture and the senses.
Areas of supervision
Areas of supervision include representations of masculinity, conflict, memory, trauma, commemoration, sites of memory and museums as well as the visual and material culture of reconciliation. Also, the intersections of visual culture with other senses in representations of memory and trauma.
Selected publications
Books
Memory, Masculinity and National Identity in British Visual Culture, 1914-1930, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
Chapters in books
‘Gilbert Ledward’, in Curtis P. (ed.), Sculpture in 20th Century Britain, (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 2003), pp.208-9.
‘Simplicity, Uniformity, Class and Discipline in the Commemoration of the First World War’, in Szulakowska U. (ed.), Power and Persuasion, (Warsaw: Henry Moore Foundation and the Polish Institute of Art, 2004), pp.155-174.
‘A Cultural History of Cyprus, 1914-2004’, in Merriman J. and Winter J. (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Modern Europe 1914-2004. Europe Since 1914 - Encyclopaedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction, (New York: Scribner’s, 2006), pp.752-55.
‘Visualising an Open Wound: Nicosia, a Divided City in an Expanded Europe’, Peter Martin (ed.), City in Art, (Warsaw: Institute of Art, Polish Academy, 2007), pp. 215-226.
‘‘Desiring Skin’: Eugenics, Trauma and Acting Out of Masculinities in British Inter-war Visual Culture’, in F. Brauer and A. Cullen (eds.), Corpus Dilecti, (Aldershot: Ashgate, Forthcoming, December 2008)
Journal articles
‘Trauma, Space and Embodiment: the Sensorium of a Divided City’, Journal of War and Cultural Studies, Vol. 1, Issue 3, Nov 2008.
Selected conference papers and presentations
‘‘Unconquerable Manhood’: Memory, Bereavement and Masculinity’, Association of Art Historians Conference, Edinburgh University, April, 2000‘War and Memory’, Tate Gallery Lecture Series, August 2000
‘The ‘Right to Strike’ and the Commemoration of the First World War’, School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck College, University of London, July 2001
‘Masculinity, Popular Culture and the Commemoration of the First World War’, Mars in Ascendants – Conference on the Culture of the First World War, Northampton University, August 2001
‘Guns as Bearers of Memory’, Memory and the Visual Image Seminar, Institute of Romance Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, October 2001
‘Simplicity, Class and Discipline. The Cenotaph and the Establishment of Hegemonic Masculinities’, Polish and English Art Historians Conference, Leeds, April 2002
‘Trauma and Beauty in the Visual Culture of the 1920s’, Group for War and Culture Studies, University of Stirling, April 2002
‘Shell shock, Dreams and Facial Disfigurement - Censoring the male body’, War, Art and Medicine Conference, University College, the National Portrait Gallery and the Group for War and Cultural Studies, University College and the National Portrait Gallery, November 2002
‘Embodying (Post)-colonial Masculinities. The War of Independence from British Rule in Cyprus (1955-60) and the construction of gender and national identities’, The Body at War: Somatic Cartographies of Western Warfare in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Westminster University, June 2004
‘Visualising an Open Wound: Nicosia. A Divided City in an Expanded Europe’, The City in Art Conference, Polish Academy, Warsaw, September 2004
‘"Desiring Skin": Eugenics, Trauma, and Acting Out of Masculinities in the visual culture of Interwar Britain’, Association of Art Historians Conference, Bristol, April 2005
‘(Re) - Negotiating Space in a Divided City. Women artists in Nicosia, Cyprus’, Women and Space Conference, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, June 2005
‘The War Photographic Album’, Photography: Theory, Practices and Debates, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, October 2006
‘The Psychic Life of a Divided City’, The Visual Politics of Psychoanalysis in a Post-Traumatic World, Convened by Prof. Griselda Pollock, Association of Art Historians Conference, Belfast, April 2007
‘Borders, Memory, Conflict. Artistic Production and Ethnic Reconciliation in Nicosia, Cyprus’, Cultural Memory Seminar Series, University of Portsmouth, May 2007
‘Writing the Body in Interwar Britain’, Writing War in the Twentieth Century: Nation – Body – Text Symposium, University of Portsmouth, May 2007
‘The Sensorium of a Divided City’, The Making and Remaking of memory after 1945, Reading University, July 2008
‘Remembering War in the Museum Space’ The Making and Remaking of Memory after 1945, Birkbeck,
Events Organised
‘Memory, Gender & War. An Interdisciplinary Approach’, Symposium organised at Birkbeck, July 2001
‘War, Community and Visual Culture’, session at the Art Historians Association Conference (April 2003) convened together with Angela Weight, Imperial War Museum, and the Group for War and Cultural Studies, University of Westminster
‘Other Than The Visual’, session at the Art Historians Conference (April 2006) convened together with Patrizia di Bello, School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck
‘The Making and Remaking of Memory after 1945’, Series of Symposia organised with the University of Reading, July and October 2008
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