Dr Naomi Pearce

I am an interdisciplinary scholar working across fiction, art writing and performance practice. I trained as a visual artist and spent the mid-2000s co-running a studio and gallery project in Bermondsey, South London. This experience led me to become interested in the history, politics and gender dynamics of artist-led initiatives, subjects I examined during a practice-based PhD at Edinburgh University. 

My debut novel Innominate explored the undervalued and forgotten work of women administrators in London’s artist-led organizations of the 1970s and was published by the small press, MOIST, in 2023. The book received praise from Bhanu Kapil and Juliet Jacques, with Iain Sinclair describing it as ‘a classic of local archaeology.’ 

My writing draws on feminist and queer art history, site-specific practice, genre fiction and theory. My research on affective and embodied archival methods has been published in ‘Gestures: A Body of Work’, Manchester University Press and a special issue of the British Art Studies journal ‘Queer Art in Britain Since the 1980s’, both 2025, and ‘Grassroots Artmaking Political Struggle and Activist Art in the UK, 1960-Present’, Bloomsbury, 2026.  

I am motivated by the creative possibilities of ‘working things out in public’ either through live performance or the curation of exhibition and events, often collaborating with other artists. My projects have been presented nationally and internationally including The Warburg Institute, London; Chapter, Cardiff; Tramway, Glasgow; Turner Contemporary, Margate and San Serriffe, Amsterdam. 

From 2018 - 2022 I was a member of the Rita Keegan Archive Project, a social history and curatorial collective which sought to preserve, exhibit and share the collections of the artist Rita Keegan OBE. Activities included an exhibition at South London Gallery and the archival sourcebook ‘Mirror Reflecting Darkly’ published by MIT Press. I now volunteer as an administrator for the Rita Keegan Foundation, established in 2024.

I teach broadly on contemporary art and curatorial practice; feminist art history; critical theory and interdisciplinary research methodologies. 

I welcome applications from potential PhD candidates working in the following research areas: feminism and art practice, queer and trans studies and art, creative archival methodologies, art and critical medical humanities, autofiction, artist's novels, and site-specific practice in all its forms.