Reader in Cultural Policy Studies

Tel: +44 (0)24 765 23459
Email: J dot P dot Vickery at warwick dot ac dot uk

Office: FAB1.56
School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures (SCAPVC)
Faculty Arts Building
Central Campus
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7HS

About

I have been at Warwick since arriving in 2001 from a Henry Moore post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Essex. My first task was to set up a contemporary art dimension to the History of Art department, after which I was invited to create a succession of international masters degrees in the (then) Centre for Cultural Policy Studies. I have remained invested in postgraduate pedagogy, currently reconstructing our original flagship course, the MA in International Cultural Policy and Management – pioneered by the Centre’s first director, Oliver Bennet in the early 1990s. Oliver is still editor of the field’s number one journal, the IJCP, on which I often act as reviewer, and along with colleagues, we make a regular contribution to the field’s biennial congress – the ICCPR, sponsored by the journal. I have acted as expert reviewer for most of the major funders, and am still a member of the ESRC Peer Review college and annually contribute to the Irish Research Council’s PGR awards process. My history of academic management is mostly entrepreneurial rather than bureaucratic (notably, the Aesthesis Project from 2006-2012, with its international journal and conferences in Paris, Krakow, Copenhagen, Bled, among others). I was co-director of the Shanghai City Lab project (2013-15); Chair of the Art of Management and Organization Ltd (2014-2017), on the management committee of Coventry’s Spon Spun Festival (2017-2020) among other cultural events. I have been a visiting scholar at Poznan, Belgrade and Hildesheim. Internally, I have sat on a range of committees and was Director of the CCMPS (2020-2023).

For my CV and more detail, see my LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-vickery-ba-ma-phd-5244bb11/

Research interests

Areas of specialisation:

• Public culture and public policies for culture (cultural governance)
• Cultural Rights, Democracy and Political theories of culture
• Creative Economy and Sustainable Development (local community, urban and global)

Experience and secondary research interests:

• Festivals and Public events
• Arts organisations, management and strategy
• Art practice and the public realm
• Architecture, design and urban planning
• Photography and film -- art as research

Current research projects

I am currently working on three project lines:

1: Cultural Diplomacy and International Cultural Relations – various papers are available on WRAP, an edited book nearing completion ‘Understanding Cultural Diplomacy’ (with Nick Cull and Stuart MacDonald), with a podcast series and online symposium in the new year. I am member lead for the Unitwin network ‘Cultural Policies, Diversity and Transformation’, where we are organising common online seminars for PGR, with biennial conference, and an issue of the cultural policy yearbook, the KPY. We are also part of a EU Horizon submission on a decolonial research partnership between Europe, the Middle East and Africa
2: Cultural Devolution: cultural policy, regional and local strategy: I am writing a chapter for a forthcoming book on local cultural policies (Schramme, Routledge 2025); I was part of the Culture Commons ‘future of local cultural decision making’ project, producing three reports, with ongoing policy impact activities (see: https://www.culturecommons.uk/futureoflcdm). I am principally interested in the local application of Cultural Rights, currently writing a monograph ‘Cultural Rights and the Human Right to Culture’, with a range of articles on this subject.
3: Cultural Pedagogy and Critical Intervention: I have a career-long interest in international postgraduate pedagogy, one current expression of which is the new Global Research Media Lab project, involving PhD students in publishing, editorial and critical interventions in global research discourse and the politics of knowledge production. This is yet to be advertised.

Teaching

My teaching can be divided into three areas: (i) seminar based teaching, usually interactive and case-based; (ii) field-based, where I have led student groups across cities in the UK, France and Germany; and (iii) civic pedagogy, where my students have partnered with artists and groups in the city, and using engaged methods (cultural mapping, to urban ethnography, ‘curating the city’ and 'photourbanism') I have directed them in curating a number of small public exhibitions on subjects on urban life in Coventry (since the first ‘Kalejdoskop’ in June 2015; then the 'Taste of Life: global food justice' of June 2016; ‘Mobile Creativity Coventry, June 2017; and the final ‘Welcome Home: the immigration story of Coventry’ (June 2019). Some of my experience in this was registered in the special issue Vickery, O’Connor and Gu, eds. ‘Teaching the Cultural and Creative Industries: an International Perspective’, in Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Vol. 18, No 2/3. I founded and wrote the curriculum for three international masters degrees, over 20 new modules and by 2024 having supervised over 150 MA dissertations. I have held seminars and consultations on the shape and curriculum of a new international masters in cultural policy and management.

Research Supervision

I have supervised a number of successful PhD projects, and will currently take students in many areas of cultural policy studies – urban culture and cities; public culture and art institutions; cultural development and local community; global development and creative economy; cultural rights, freedom and democracy. I am currently supervising,
Younggeon Byun on Cultural Rights and community in South Korea.
Simona Vrabcova on international cultural relations
Ziling Yang on Creative Clusters in Shanghai
Lukas Enkhjargal on post-Duchamp uses of glass as art media
Hannah Griffiths on Cultural Rights and the UK Opera sector
Ellen Brown (Otto Saumarez Smith as lead supervisor) on the new urban-cultural landscape of inner city retail in the post-Covid world.

Administrative roles

• Currently Acting Director of MA Creative and Media Enterprises
• Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre for International Development (WICID) Steering Committee
• Director of PGR (PhD supervision, mentoring, reviewing, examination, coordination, etc.)
• New course development

Selected Publications

After three years as Centre Director, I spent last year on sabbatical preparing a new phase of research, mostly involving working papers and policy papers (e.g: https://www.culturecommons.uk/publications). See the Warwick repository WRAP: https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/view/author_id/7730.html

My last conventional articles were (2022) ‘Human Rights and the City of Culture – what role for the global politics of human rights in urban development?’ (co-editors Franco Bianchini and Guy Saez) Cultural Policy Yearbook 2017-18 (İletişim Publishing Istanbul): 29-30. (2021) ‘The Status of the Artist, Cultural Rights, and the 2005 Convention’, Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development, Issue 25: 2021: 131-145. Previous to that, note the still-relevant special issue with O’Connor and Gu, ‘Teaching the Cultural and Creative Industries: an International Perspective’, in Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Vol. 18, No 2/3, and my contribution to the Springer Handbook of Philosophy of Management (Neesham and Segal eds.), ‘Aesthetics, Management and the Organisation of Space’, pp.1-23.

Qualifications

• BA History of Art and Architecture (UEA, Norwich): First Class (starred)
• MA Aesthetics and Visual Arts (University of Essex): Distinction
• PhD Art History & Theory (University of Essex).

Professional appointments and associations

• Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Peer Review College member (2010--2013; 2013--2016: second term by invitation); Economic and Social Research Council (ESCR) Peer Review College member (invited -- 2015)
• International Association of Art Critics (AICA): Nominated 2012.
• Aesthetics, Creativity, and Organisations Research Network (ACORN): Nominated 2008.
• Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism (SCOS): Nominated 2004.
• International Studies Association (ISA): subscription.
• Research Assessor, Carnegie Trust for Scottish Universities; Expert Assessor (post-doctoral awards) Irish Research Council; Advisory Board, UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policies and Cultural Diplomacy; Advisory Board, Journal of the Faculty of Arts (Belgrade University of the Arts).