https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5298-7789
Dr. Roddy Hunter is an artist, curator, educator and researcher specialising in performance, conceptual, and new media art. His research investigates artistic and curatorial strategies in relation to how social and technological infrastructures shape everyday lives, identities and worldviews. His research has been published by Routledge and Palgrave Macmillan, among others, and in international journals such as Apparatus (Berlin), Acoustic Space (Riga), and Inter: art actuel (Québec). A recognised art educator, he has held several teaching and leadership roles in higher education internationally, including previously as Director of Programmes in Fine Art at Middlesex University and currently as Programme Leader, Master of Fine Art (MFA) and Postgraduate Programme Director in the School of Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art.
Hunter's work as a performance artist since the 1990s has been internationally recognised, including in the global survey 'Ice Cream: Contemporary Art in Culture' (Phaidon, 2007) and his monograph 'Civil Twilight and Other Social Works' (Trace: Samizdat, 2007). He has become increasingly engaged with agency and behaviour under post-digital conditions, such as through his PhD, 'Curating The Eternal Network after Globalisation', which led to the artistic-curatorial project 'The Next Art-of-Peace Biennale 2015-17'. Other recent projects include 'Networked Art Practice After Digital Preservation' with Professor Sarah Cook, University of Glasgow, which explored challenges and solutions for preserving historical analogue and born-digital networked art practice with outputs including a co-authored chapter in 'The Black Box Book. Archives and Curatorship in the Age of Transformation of Art Institutions' (Masaryk University Press, 2023).
Since 2021, his research focuses on the project, 'Curating The Digital Attic Archive: A Case Study For Open-Source Approaches To Artists' Archives,' developed with his long-term collaborator and co-author, Dr Judit Bodor, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee. Together, they have been exploring how to curate The Attic Archive (1980-2020), established by artist Pete Horobin at 37 Union Street, Dundee, Scotland, as a self-historicisation project of work produced under four different identities, namely Pete Horobin (1980-89), Marshall Anderson (1990-99), Peter Haining (2000-09), and Ae Phor (2010-19). Responding to the archive's historical formation through peer-to-peer networked correspondence art and its present dispersal across collections in Scotland, Ireland and Hungary, Bodor and Hunter are establishing an open-source, user-generated web platform to share and generate work, correspondence and ephemera related to the archive by an open and inclusive network of care of artists, archivists, curators, and researchers internationally.
Hunter regularly contributes internationally to the academic and artistic community as a subject expert, external examiner, peer reviewer, and PhD supervisor.
performance, conceptual, and new media art; open source infrastructures; mediation, alienation, nihilism; curatorial strategies; digital preservation; self-archiving.
Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Research Network Award, ‘Curating Open Source Artists’ Archives: The Attic Archive (1975-2020) as Case Study’, co-investigator with Dr Judit Bodor, University of Dundee. £20,000 (2023-25).
He would like to hear from potential doctoral students exploring performance, time-based and site-responsive art, new media art histories and practices, particularly networked art, software studies, open-source infrastructures, and contemporary curatorial practice.
Caulm Eccleston, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Dundee. Thesis title: 'Die to self': A practice-led exploration of the unseen in The Alastair MacLennan Archive. Co-supervisor, SGSAH AHRC DTP cross-HEI supervision team. Expected completion: December 2025
Yimin Xiang, Doctor of Philosophy, Thesis title: 'Archive In the Flesh: Investigating the Anxieties of Digital Media Through Printmaking Practice'. Primary Supervisor. Expected completion: September 2026
Toby (Chengwei) Mao, Doctor of Philosophy, Thesis title: 'Framing the frame in a frame: How could subtle and unsettled conceptual state experiments and the indirect access to material possibly engage an alternative understanding of the ontology of art?'. Primary Supervisor. Expected completion: September 2026
Co-supervisor, Charlotte Goldthorpe, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Huddersfield, 2022. Thesis title: 'Materialising Memories: Investigating the Rearticulation of Personal Narratives Through the Crafted Artefact'.
Programme Leader, Master of Fine Art (MFA), 2024-present.
Course leader, ‘Research Methods and Methodologies in Practice’, cross-SoFA Postgraduate course, 2024.
Course leader, ‘Studio Teaching’, cross-GSA Postgraduate Elective, 2023.
Head of Department, Sculpture and Environmental Art, 2021-22
