Dr Sophie Hope

Overview

Biography

Dr Sophie Hope joined the department in September 2010. She has worked on the MA Arts Policy and Management since then, teaching on the core module and developing modules in curating, critical theory and urban development. Sophie co-developed and leads a network of practice-based research students at Birkbeck, called Corkscrew. She chairs the School of Arts Disability Committee and is a member of the Peltz/Arts Space Steering Committee, Birkbeck Institute of Gender and Sexuality (BIGS) and Centre for Museum Cultures Research Centre Steering Committee.

Prior to working at Birkbeck full time, Sophie worked in a curatorial partnership with Sarah Carrington, as B+B (2000-2006) and as an independent evaluator of public and socially engaged art. She was awarded an AHRC grant in 2007 to carry out a practice-based PhD at Birkbeck, which she completed in 2011. The title was: Participating in the Wrong Way? Practice-based research into cultural democracy and the commissioning of art to effect social change. 

Since completing her PhD and moving into academia, Sophie has pursued a number of practice-based projects which explore histories, theories and  geographies of cultural democracy, community arts and socially engaged art practice (1984 Dinners and miaaw.net with Owen Kelly); physical and emotional relationships to work (Manual Labours with Jenny Richards) and criticality, governance and intersubjectivity in the socially engaged art economy (Cards on the Table, Social Art Maps, and Beyond Participation?).

Sophie is a UCU union rep for her department and works on issues of inequality and social justice in higher education and cultural sectors, developing ethical work placements for postgraduate students, for example.

Highlights

• Global Staffroom Manual Labours Podcast (Summer 2020)

• Unfinished business: Performative Interviews as a method for expressing failure in the socially engaged art job, Conjunctions. Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation, 7(2). (2020)

   

• Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse podcast series with Owen Kelly (2018-ongoing)

Qualifications

• PhD, Birkbeck, University of London, 2011
• MA, Goldsmiths, University of London
• BAHons, University of East Anglia

Web profiles

• Personal website
• Twitter

Professional memberships

• Fellow, Higher Education Academy

Honours and awards

• Public Engagement Award, Birkbeck, December 2020

ORCID

0000-0001-7329-735X

Research

Research interests

• Socially engaged art, public art, community art
• Practice-based and participatory research methodologies
• Histories of cultural democracy in policy and practice
• Cultural labour and precarious working conditions

Research overview

Sophie uses practice-based action research to explore criticality in and as work, drawing on fields of research such as cultural policy, cultural studies, art history and labour studies.

Her current projects include investigating the histories, influences and potential futures of cultural democracy in British and international contexts (drawing on her 1984 Dinners work and Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse podcast series with Owen Kelly). 

Sophie explores the ways in which socially engaged art is commissioned, funded and experienced from different perspectives (drawing on her previous work developing Social Art Maps and a card game called Cards on the Table). She is currently evaluating a large scale EU funded project called BE PART, using experimental, participatory research methods to understand better the meanings of participation and co-creation across ten arts organisation in Europe and beyond. 

Sophie has collaborated with Jenny Richards as Manual Labours since 2013 on a series of residencies, commissions and exhibitions to investigate physical and emotional relationships to work. Their work has received funding from the Arts Council of England and the Birkbeck Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund (ISSF). Jenny and Sophie were awarded the Engaged Practice Birkbeck Public Engagement Award in 2020 for their work. Their recent lockdown Global Staffroom Podcast was purchased by the University of Edinburgh Art Collection. 

Sophie also writes on the ways practice is used as a research methodology and co-developed and leads a network of practice-based research students and staff at Birkbeck, called Corkscrew, which aims to provide a reflexive space for researchers to develop their practice in the context of research. She is currently developing a podcast series with people who have completed practice-based PhD about their careers post-PhD.

Research Centres and Institutes

• Committee member, Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality (BiGS)
• Committee member, Centre for Museum Cultures
• Committee member, Peltz Gallery

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

6

I welcome PhD applications from students interested in the following topics::

• Socially engaged, participatory and public art
• Cultural policy, commissioning processes and evaluation practices
• Labour conditions in the arts and creative industries
• Community art histories in the UK
• Practice-based research in interdisciplinary contexts

If you are interested in pursuing research in any of these areas, you should first read our advice on how to apply for MPhil/PhD research before submitting an application.

Current doctoral researchers

• HENRY MULHALL

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2017 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  Cultural Constellations: Communities and Publics in the Union Street area of Plymouth

  Description:

  I am a practice-based PhD student from Arts Management. My research aims to investigate the relationship between various arts, cultural and community organisations in and around the Union Street area of Plymouth. Through a particular focus on language use, my research looks at how a collection of various practitioners and organisations can broaden civic participation, and how DIY art practice connects with cultural policy discourse. 

• LAURA COWLEY

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2021 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  Humour and polemic in UK disability arts and its institutions, 1976-2010

• PAULA CLEMENTE VEGA

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor

• RUTH SCHRYBER

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor

• SELINA ROBERTSON

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2015 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  Remembering and recovering through practice the cultural archives of London's feminist film curatorial and programming practices of the 1980s. Through a methodology of 'curatorial advocation', a term coined by B.Ruby Rich (1997) to describe feminist film curation and programming as a political and social practice, I will ask why and how this period of queer feminist collective work in film exhibition be remembered and presented in the present.

Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

• SARAH SCARSBROOK

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor

  Title of thesis:

  Artists and The Art School: Experiences and Perspectives of Fine Art Education & Professional Pedagogies in London Art Schools, 1986-2016

  Awarded:

  2021

Teaching

Teaching modules

• Teaching Arts in Higher Education (AREN071Z7)
• The Inside Out of Culture: Theories and Institutions (ARMC160S7)
• Understanding Arts Policy and Management (ARMC251S7)
• Arts Policy and Management Work Placement (FDAP003S7)

Publications