Professor Steve Edwards

Overview

Biography

Steve grew up on a council estate and he was a manual worker before going to art school with the intention of becoming a great artist, instead he found politics and theory. He studied the MA in Social History of Art at the University of Leeds with John Tagg and Griselda Pollock, receiving a Distinction, and then did PhD research at Portsmouth Polytechnic and the University of Leeds with Adrian Rifkin (and for a short while with the late Robbie Grey). Between 1991 and 1997 he was Head of Historical & Theoretical Studies in Photography at the University of Derby. In 1997 he was a visiting scholar at the Victoria & Albert Museum; the same year he moved to the Open University, where he contributed teaching material on nineteenth- and twentieth-century art to a variety of courses and edited three Open University textbooks. In 2006 he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan. Steve was made Professor at the OU in 2013 and, between 2012 and 2016, he was the Head of the Department of Art History. He joined the Department of Art History at Birkbeck in 2016 as Professor of History & Theory of Photography.

Administrative responsibilities

Research Director and REF lead
Co-Director History and Theory of Photography Research Centre

Visiting posts

Visiting Professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 01-2016 to 03-2006
Visiting Professor, Université Bordeaux-Montagne, 10-2018 to 12-2018

Professional activities

Senior Teaching Fellow HEA

Editorial Board: Oxford Art Journal

Editorial Collective Historical Materialism Book Series (Brill/Haymarket)

Co-convenor Research Seminar Series 'Marxism in Culture', Institute of Advanced Studies, senate House

Professional memberships

Senior Teaching Fellow HEA
AHRC Peer Review College

Research

Research interests

History and Theory of Photography
History of Art
Documentary
Nineteenth-Century industrial culture
Radical culture and thought
contemporary art
Marxism and Marxist-Feminism
Post-Colonialism
Art Theory

Research overview

I havea wide range of research interests including: history and theory of photography; nineteenth-century industrial culture; documentary; radical art and aesthetics in the 1970s; contemporary art; and art and social theory (particularly Marxist theory). I've published extensively and my writing has been translated into eleven languages.

Grants and funding from: the British Academy; The Leverulme Trust; The Harry Ransom Research Institute, Texas; Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung, Berlin; Helle Panke-Stiftung, Berlin; the Portuguese Ministry of Culture and FAPESP/University of Sao Paulo, Brazil; Paul Mellon Centre.

In addition to writing and speaking,I play a prominent role in supporting the infrastructure of collective research. I am currently a member of the editorial collective of the Oxford Art Journal and the highly acclaimed Historical Materialism Book Series (Leiden and Chicago). Between 2010 and 2015 I was an editor of the journal Historical Materialism and helped convene its annual conference. I also an organiser of the long-running research seminar: ‘Marxism in Culture’ at the Institute of Historical Research.

Research Centres and Institutes

Co-Director, History and Theory of Photography Research Centre
Board, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities
Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:: 8

Current doctoral researchers

FREYA TYRRELL

Nature of supervision:
Principal Supervisor, Oct 2023 onwards
LINDA ROBINS DA SILVA

Nature of supervision:
Principal Supervisor, Sep 2019 onwards
SANDRINE CHENE

Nature of supervision:
Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2021 onwards

Title of thesis:
Amateurs, Scientists, Tradesmen, and Artists: The Royal Photographic Society (RPS) 1853-1914
SURYA BOWYER

Nature of supervision:
Joint Principal Supervisor, Dec 2020 onwards

Title of thesis:
Collecting the Boundaries of Art in the Science Museum Group

Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

TAMSIN SILVEY

Nature of supervision:
Joint Principal Supervisor, Jun 2019

Title of thesis:
Conflict-Photography-Exhibition: curating conflict photographs in British art and history museums, 2010-20

Awarded:
2023
KRUPA DESAI

Nature of supervision:
Principal Supervisor, Oct 2017

Title of thesis:
Photographic Histories of Postcolonial India: The Politics of Seeing (and Unseeing)

Awarded:
2022

Teaching

Teaching modules

Art and Society in the Nineteenth Century (AHVM010S5)
MA Dissertation (AHVM019D7)
Debates in Art History (AHVM091S4)
Museum Cultures - Approaches, Issues, Skills (ARVC059S7)
Photography Between Art and Document, 1839 to Now (ARVC229S6)
Frameworks: Histories and Theories of Art, Architecture, Photography (ARVC247S7)

Publications

Article

Edwards, Steve (2024) Institution of autonomy: the worker photography movement. Notes from Below
Edwards, Steve (2024) Family phantasmagoria: Antoine Claudet, stereographs, and middle-class dummies. Oxford Art Journal ISSN 0142-6540.
Edwards, Steve (2021) White-collar blues: Allan Sekula casts an eye over the professional-managerial class. Nonsite (37), ISSN 2164-1668.
Edwards, Stephen (2020) Making a case: Daguerreotypes. British Art Studies (18), ISSN 2058-5462.
Edwards, Stephen (2020) Why pictures? From art history to business history and back again. History of Photography 44 (1), pp. 3-15. ISSN 0308-7298.
Edwards, Steve (2018) Photography: a Marxist bibliography. Revue Periode ISSN 2492-2455.
Edwards, Steve (2013) Socialism and the sea: Allan Sekula (1951-2013). Radical Philosophy (182), pp. 61-65. ISSN 0300-211X.
Edwards, Steve (2013) In Allan Sekula’s wake. Photographies 7 (1), pp. 113-116. ISSN 1754-0763.

Book

Martins, L.R. Edwards, Steve, ed. (2017) The conspiracy of modern art. Historical Materialism. 137, Leiden, Holland: Brill. ISBN 9789004280045.
Rifkin, A. Edwards, Steve, ed. (2017) Communards and other cultural histories: essays by Adrian Rifkin. Historical Materialism Book Series. (128), Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. ISBN 9789004231887.

Book Section

Edwards, Steve (2022) The street & the barricades: demos and document in Nineteenth-Century photography. In: Documentary Genealogies Photography 1848–1917. Madrid, Spain: Museo Reina Sofia. pp. 101-118. ISBN 9788480266420.
Edwards, Steve (2022) The streets & the barricades: demos and document in Nineteenth-Century photography. In: Pinteño, A. (ed.) Documentary Genealogies: Photography 1848–1917. Madrid, Spain: Museo Reina Sofia. pp. 101-117. ISBN 9788480266420.
Edwards, Steve (2021) ‘Present, the Scene of ... Selves, the Occasion of ... Ruses’: Fred Orton’s Art History. In: Aesthetic Thinking: Essays on Intention, Painting, Action, and Ideology. Historical Materialism Book Series. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9789004503298.
Day, G. and Edwards, Steve and Vishmidt, M. (2021) Art. In: Skeggs, B. and Farris, S.F. and Toscano, A. and Bromberg, S. (eds.) The Sage handbook of Marxism. London: Sage. ISBN 9781473974234.
Edwards, Stephen (2020) 'Photography, Industry, Work'. In: Mellenthin, P. and Osadtschy, O. (eds.) Exposure Time: Photographs from the Collection of Ruth and Peter Herzog. Basel, Switzerland: Christoph Merian Verlag. pp. 268-281. ISBN 9783856169350.
Day, G. and Edwards, Steve (2019) Differential time and aesthetic form: uneven and combined capitalism in the work of Allan Sekula. In: Christie, J. and Degirmencioglu, N. (eds.) Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development: From International Relations to World Literature. Historical Materialism Book Series. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. pp. 253-288. ISBN 9789004384736.
Edwards, Steve (2018) 'Dirty Realism': documentary photography in 1970s Britain—a maquette. In: Baker, M. and Hemingway, A. (eds.) Art as World Making: Studies in Critical realism & Naturalism. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. pp. 248. ISBN 9781526114907.
Edwards, Steve (2017) Painting, between Gewalt and labour: an Introduction to the conspiracy of modern art. In: Edwards, Steve (ed.) The Conspiracy of Modern Art. Historical Materialism. Leiden, Holland: Brill. pp. 1-14. ISBN 9789004280045.
Edwards, Steve (2016) Allan Sekula: Fish Story. In: Hemingway, A. and Schneider, N. (eds.) Kunst Und Politik: Jahbuch Der Guernica-Gesellschaft. Hauptwerke politischer Kunst im 20. Jarhundert/Icons of 20th-Century Political Art. Kunst und politik. Gottingen, Germany: V&R unipress. pp. 147-157. ISBN 9783847106890.
Edwards, Steve (2015) Allan Sekula’s Chronotopes: uneven and combined capitalism. In: Van Gelder, H. (ed.) Ship of Fools/The Dockers Museum. Lieven Gevaert Series. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press. pp. 31-43. ISBN 9789462700055.
Edwards, Steve (2014) Decor and decorum at the "Temple of Photography". In: Arnold, D. (ed.) Interdisciplinary Encounters: Hidden and Visible Explorations of the Work of Adrian Rifkin. London, UK and New York, U.S.: IB Tauris. pp. 73-105. ISBN 9781780767024.

Other

Edwards, Steve (2017) 5 blogposts for Fotomuseum Winthertur: 'The Fire Last Time: Documentary and Politics in 1970s Britain'. Switzerland: FotoMuseum Wintherthur.