Dr Catherine Spencer
Senior Lecturer in Art History
Biography
I was educated at state primary and secondary schools in Norfolk and Wiltshire, before studying for a BA in English Literature at the University of Cambridge. I switched to Art History through an MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, followed by a PhD at the University of York. Before joining St Andrews, I worked as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.
I have held fellowships at the Library of Congress, Washington DC; the Terra Foundation for American Art, Giverny; the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven. My research has been supported by grants from the Terra Foundation for American Art; Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; UKRI/AHRC; UKRI/ESRC; Carnegie Trust, Leverhulme Trust; Getty Research Institute; and the British Academy.
Research areas
My research and teaching from the 1960s to the contemporary moment explores art’s relationships with political formulations, with particular interests including intersectional feminisms, internationalism and transnationalism, technologies of mediation, and abstraction, focusing on the Americas and Europe. Current writing examines the constructs of the border and the trace in connection with art using abstraction in Britain since the 1970s, looking at the practices of Rasheed Araeen, Diego Barboza, Sonia Barrett, Frank Bowling, Rita Donagh, and Veronica Ryan, among others. Supported by an AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship, in 2021 I co-organised (with Amy Tobin) the event series Grassroots: Artmaking and Political Struggle with Kettle’s Yard Gallery, and co-curated (with Caroline Gausden, Kirsten Lloyd and Nat Raha) the exhibition Life Support: Forms of Care in Art and Activism at Glasgow Women’s Library. A growing strand of research focuses on feminist photographic practices, and I have a longstanding interest in the abstract painter Jay DeFeo. I regularly write exhibition reviews, and my art criticism has appeared in Apollo, Artforum, Art Monthly, Burlington Contemporary, Burlington Magazine, the International Review of African American Art, and MAP Magazine.
Previous publications have traced connections between transnational performance art, embodiment, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis, cybernetics and system theory. My book Beyond the Happening: Performance Art and the Politics of Communication (Manchester University Press, 2020) examines how artists across Latin America, particularly Argentina, the US and Europe transformed performance art into a site of psycho-social analysis during the 1960s and 1970s. Related articles have appeared in Art History, Art Journal, ARTMargins, Oxford Art Journal, Tate Papers and Parallax. With Jo Applin and Amy Tobin I co-edited London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent and Ephemeral Networks, 1960–1980 (Penn State University Press, 2018); I have also co-edited special issues of Tate Papers and the Journal of Curatorial Studies.
I have seen seven PhDs to completion at the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, and currently supervise several other projects relating to the above research areas.
PhD supervision
- Camila Cavalcante Pereira
- Cicely Farrer
- William Helfrecht
- Aline Hernandez
- Lucy Howie
- Alex Lednicky
- Mary Molina Ergueta
Selected publications
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Care practices
Spencer, C., 1 Apr 2026, Veronica Ryan : Multiple conversations. Foote, C. & Hasham, L. (eds.). London: Whitechapel Gallery, p. 87-93Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
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Franki Raffles: Asia and women's work
Sheng, V. K. & Spencer, C., 27 Apr 2026Research output: Non-textual form › Exhibition
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Sonia E. Barrett's bodies of evidence
Spencer, C., 24 Feb 2026, Caribbean eco-aesthetics: strategies of survival through contemporary art. Keohane, K., King, D. R. & Smith, G. (eds.). Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 183-207 (Rethinking art's histories).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review
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'Images that don't, in general, exist': Format Photographers Agency and the politics of representation in print
Spencer, C., 1 Sept 2025, Counter print: the alternative art press in Britain after 1970. Horne, V. (ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 110–135 (Rethinking art's histories).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review
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To let you understand: Franki Raffles, feminist networks and solidarity
Spencer, C. E., 1 Nov 2024, Franki Raffles: photography, activism, campaign works. Dean, E. (ed.). Gateshead: BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, p. 12-24 13 p.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter