Dr Ceren Özpınar is a Senior Lecturer and the Course Leader for BA (Hons) History of Art and Design and BA (Hons) Visual Culture. She has taught in the areas of art and cultural history, critical studies, art management and visual culture since 2008. Before coming to Brighton, she held post- and pre-doctoral fellowships: a British Academy Newton International Fellowship at the University of Sussex (2015-17), and a Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of Leeds (2013-14). Ceren completed her PhD in History of Art at Istanbul Technical University in 2015. She also holds an MA in Fashion and Textile Design and a BA in Art Management with Curating. 

Dr Ceren Özpınar is a historian specialising in art, visual culture, historiography and exhibitions in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her research focuses on the relationship between gender, identity and art since 1960 with a special focus on Turkey and the Middle East. Ceren's research interests lie in three key areas: Revisiting art histories; investigating transnational feminist alliances in the wider Middle Eastern geography; and an examination of curatorial strategies and discourses of large-scale exhibitions, such as retrospectives and biennials, in the Global South.

Ceren's research has received funding from British, American and Turkish learned societies and research bodies (British Academy’s Newton International Fellowship, 2015; Getty Foundation’s CAA Program Award, 2016, 2017 and 2020; TUBITAK's Doctoral Research Fellowship, 2013). In 2020, Ceren was awarded a Rising Star, which is one of the University of Brighton's research awards, for her project "Where Matter Meets Memory: Alternative Political Futures in Kurdish Art Today.” Ceren's project investigates the creative works produced within the diasporic Kurdish communities.

Publications

Ceren's latest book, a co-edited volume titled Under The Skin: Feminist Art and Art Histories from The Middle East and North Africa Today, is published by Oxford University Press and The British Academy in 2020 (Read the reviews in Oxford Art Journal, Third Text and Woman's Art Journal). Her first monograph The Art Historiography in Turkey (1970-2010), which stemmed from her doctoral thesis, was published in 2016 by Tarih Vakfi Press. She is currently completing her second monograph, which is also forthcoming with Oxford University Press and The British Academy. This book investigates the relationship between art history and women artists in Turkey, and is based on her Newton research project entitled "Re-visiting Feminist Temporalities in Art and Art History in Turkey from the 1970s onwards." Ceren's latest articles appeared in the Art Journal, Art in Translation, Art & the Public Sphere, and Third Text.

Ceren is an Expert Evaluator for the European Commission's Horizon 2020, the British Academy and the British Institute at Ankara. She is a peer reviewer for Art in Translation, Visual Studies, Journal of the Middle East Women's Studies and an academic advisor for the London-based Anthem Press. Ceren also leads a team of researchers for the Paris-based AWARE (Archives of Women Artists Research and Exhibitions).

Ceren welcomes media requests. Check out her latest press appearance in the Apollo Art Magazine.

Dr Ceren Özpınar is currently supervising three PhD students at Brighton, and one at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, who work on subjects in transnational storytelling, lesser-known women artists in the 20th century, feminism in the museum, and textile-based artistic practices.

Ceren would be interested in supervising PhD projects on feminist and queer approaches to art; transnational art histories; narratives of difference; memory and materiality. She would also welcome proposals interested in researching any aspect of the project of decolonising the history of art and exhibitions, particularly but not exclusively, in the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and North African geographies.