Frances Robertson
Lecturer and Reader in Material Cultures of Drawing
Design History & Theory
Glasgow School of Art
Research Interests
visual culture and drawing, print culture, material cultures of drawing, history of drawing education, draughtsmen training, visual culture of engineering, landscape representation
Research Profile
I have been a Lecturer at Glasgow School of Art since 2002, with previous experience in art practice and theatre design. I investigate the material culture of practices and values associated with drawing and related visual communication in modernising industrial societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My interdisciplinary research, while reflecting in part on the body of innovative design and drawing practices associated with GSA since its founding, has made a separate, distinct and influential contribution to national and international academic scholarship in design history, print and publications history, cultural history, and technology and science studies in relation to the sociology of knowledge. My recent Readership (2018) attests my personal academic standing, with resemore...
I have been a Lecturer at Glasgow School of Art since 2002, with previous experience in art practice and theatre design. I investigate the material culture of practices and values associated with drawing and related visual communication in modernising industrial societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My interdisciplinary research, while reflecting in part on the body of innovative design and drawing practices associated with GSA since its founding, has made a separate, distinct and influential contribution to national and international academic scholarship in design history, print and publications history, cultural history, and technology and science studies in relation to the sociology of knowledge. My recent Readership (2018) attests my personal academic standing, with research interests and publications on drawing practices, print culture and material culture showing different strengths in impact, public engagement, and collaborative working. However, they are unified by my aim of empowering those engaged in drawing and visual communication practices in contemporary contexts, and of disseminating the contribution of historical actors. Overall, I investigate the techniques used to command trust in the authority of the image, taking a material culture approach to the study of drawing with particular reference to the ‘self-fashioning’ of practitioners in recent and contemporary visual economies. For the future I am developing a research project into interactions between landscape representation, notions of national and regional identity and the cultural politics of design and landscape shaping in Scotland
Qualifications
PhD Glasgow School of Art 2005-2010 (P/T) ‘Ruling the line: learning to draw in the first age of mechanical reproduction’ AHRC funded
MPhil Glasgow University 2000-2003 (P/T) (M.Phil-Research) Art history ‘The drawing strategies of James Nasmyth 1808-1890: technological and visual traditions in the early nineteenth century’
Glasgow School of Art 1997-2000 BA (Hons) Drawing and painting 2:1
PGCert (Learning and teaching, GSA, 2015)
