Dr Elizabeth A. Hodson is an anthropologist, researcher and writer. She lectures in the Fine Art Critical Studies department in the School of Fine Art and is the PhD Coordinator for the School of Design, at The Glasgow School of Art. She completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen in 2012, working with Professor Tim Ingold, focusing on drawing in contemporary Icelandic art. Her doctoral research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and The Royal Anthropological Institute. She also held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Aberdeen with the European Research Council project ‘Knowing From the Inside’ (2013-2018).
Her research is concerned with the interstices between contemporary art practice, anthropology and art history. As a trained anthropologist with an ethnographic focus on art in Iceland and Scotland, she explores a range of topics including drawing, interdisciplinarity, alterity, the imagination and materiality. She has written for the Journal of Visual Culture, Visual Studies, Journal of Material Cultures, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture. Her recently published work has addressed ideas around skin and fur within contemporary performance art, specifically the Gaelic selkie in the paper (with Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture) called ‘The Ròn Mòr’s Touch’, and the tale of the Alpine Stollenwurm, with artist-activist Emily Joy. She is currently working on the themes of loss, absence and the figure of the ghost, and feminist and posthuman strategies of readdress. She is co-founder of the On Feminism reading group with filmmaker and artist, Margaret Salmon.
Contemporary drawing practice; Material Culture; New Materialism; Post-humanism; Anthropocene; Feminism; Socially Engaged Practice; Storytelling; Anthropology and Art; Shamanism and magic
Elizabeth supervises PhDs in the field of drawing, creative ethnography, feminist practice, new materialism, socially engaged practice, landscape activism and contemporary painting.
