Reader in Cultural Policy Studies

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

G.40
Millburn House
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7HS

About

I was Henry Moore post-doctoral fellow at the University of Essex before being appointed to Warwick, initially to in the History of Art department, and then the (then) Centre for Cultural Policy Studies. I was an editor of the journal Aesthesis (2006-9), and since 2016 I am co-Editor in Chief of The Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development. I have reviewed for journals and funding bodies, including the British Council, AHRC (Peer Review College member, 2009-16; ESCR College member, 2016--), and various EU and European universities; I have been External Examiner for a number of universities (Kings College the last, Leeds the next). I am on the Steering Committee of the Warwick Interdisciplinary Centre for International Development. I have organised conference streams, public seminars and on the scientific committee of international conferences (Paris, Krakow, Copenhagen, Bled). I was co-director of the Shanghai City Lab project (2013-15); Chair of the Art of Management and Organization Ltd (non-profit) for three years; I have been advisor to a number of arts organisations and on the management committee of the Spon Spun Festival. I have been a visiting scholar at Poznan, Belgrade and in 2017 was visiting professor at the UNESCO Chair, University of Hildesheim, Germany.

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

Research interests

My areas of specialisation are:

• 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)

I have experience and secondary research interests in:

• Festivals and Public cultural 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

My research usually emerges from an engagement with the public and cultural realm — cultural workers in arts organisations, or policy making — national and international. I am currently invested in the question of justice, having just written an article on justice and the creative city for the KPY Cultural Policy Yearbook (Iletsim publishers Istanbul, managed by Bilgi University), as well as a full review of their new annual conference for young cultural policy scholars (some of which I chaired, now available on Youtube). I am also writing a major article on ‘Decolonisation of the Curriculum’, which relates to both research interests in critical cultural policy as well as creative pedagogies, which I have worked at through research-based teaching (see below). I am part of a research team undertaking evaluation of the civic organisations impacted by the Coventry City of Culture, and writing a separate major article on cultural evaluation; I am leading on a policy advance of Coventry’s implementation of the national Cultural Compacts policy for local authority partnerships. I am collaborating with Charles Landry and the Creative Bureaucracy project on a ‘playbook’ for agency and influence in cultural development. My central research focus, however, is the Institute of Advanced Study-funded ICR (international cultural relations) project — convening an international network who collaborate on a large research project with policy impact.

I continue my Ed-in-Chief role at the Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development. Of Spring 2021 we are publishing a general issue and a special issue, as well as configuring the future management of the journal and the ‘Global Research Media’ lab, which allows PhD students to participate in global research discourse and the online publication process.

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 (‘Kalejdoskop’ in June 2015; 'Taste of Life: global food justice', June 2016; ‘Mobile Creativity Coventry, June 2017; ‘Welcome Home: the immigration story of Coventry’ (June 2019). Some of my experience in this is 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 three international masters degrees, writing over 20 new modules, and by 2020 supervising over 150 MA dissertations. The Centre itself was founded through pioneering international masters degrees in the new subject area of culture and creative industries, and it did this from extensive research, recruitment travel, consultation and public seminars and industry stakeholder engagement. My third MA, Arts Enterprise and Development, was born out of delegate participation in the UNESCO Hangzhou Congress of 2013, and is thematically constructed around the Hangzhou Declaration on culture and sustainable development. The MA is now led by Dr Lee Martin, who is a pioneer in creativity theory and its role in social change.

Research Supervision

I have recently 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.

Recent successful PhD's include Dace Demir’s 'Cultural Policy and the Institutionalisation of Contemporary Art in Latvia' (2020); Nick Chen’s 'Creative Economy and Sustainable Development in Contemporary China' (2020) and Phitchakan Chuangchai, 'Creative Cities in the S.E. ASEAN region' (2020).
I am currently supervising
Younggeon Byun on Cultural Rights and community in South Korea.
Simona Vrabcova (with Maria Barrett) on international cultural relations
Ziling Yang on Creative Clusters in Shanghai
Lukas Enkhjargal on post-Duchamp uses of glass as art media (with Michael Hatt)
And M4C scholars for 2021-22 include
Hannah Griffiths on Cultural Rights and the UK Opera sector (with Maria Barrett)
Ellen Brown on the new urban-cultural landscape of inner city retail in the post-Covid world (with Otto Saumarez Smith)

Administrative roles

• Director: Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies
• Senior Management Team, School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures (SCAPVC) and various committees.
• Warwick Global Research Priority on International Development (GRP-ID) Steering Committee

Recent Selected Publications

• (2018) Special Issue: 'Cultural Rights and Global Development', Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development 22 (2).
• (2018) 'Arts Rights Justice: protecting and promoting artistic freedom -- an interview with Daniel Gad', Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development (Special Issue, ‘Cultural Rights and Global Development’), Issue 22: 2018: 1-- 6.

• (2018) 'Cultural Rights and Cultural Policy: identifying the cultural policy implications of culture as a human right’, Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development (Special Issue, ‘Cultural Rights and Global Development’, ed. Jonathan Vickery), Issue 22: 128-150.

• (2018) 'Creativity as Development: discourse, ideology and practice' (2018) in Martin, L. and Wilson, N. eds. (2018) The International Handbook of Creativity at Work (Palgrave).
• (2018) ‘'Culture, Populism and the Public: New Labour's early policy innovations and a paradigm-creation of a social instrumentalism' in Dragićević Šešić and Vickery, eds. ‘Cultural Populism’, Cultural Policy Yearbook 2017-18 (İletişim Publishing Istanbul).
• (2018) ‘Aesthetics, Management and the Organisation of Space’ in C. Neesham, S. Segal (eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Management, (Springer Handbooks in Philosophy): 1-23.
• (2018) Co-ed, and Foreword author, Cultural and creative spillovers in Europe - a follow-up review (Nicole McNeilly and the European Research Partnership in Creative and Cultural Spillover).

• (2019) Co-ed (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.

• (2019) “Urban Cultural Intermediaries: reflections on pedagogy and creativity in the urban economy”, in 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: 197-215.

• (2019) ‘Creative Economy, Cultural Economics and Entrepreneurship – questions for a masters’ program in its adolescence. An interview with Mariangela Lavanga and Ellen Loots’, in Vickery, O’Connor and Gu, eds. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education Vol. 18, No 2/3: 269-278.

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).