Staff Profile

I am Senior Lecturer in Art History in the Fine Art department at Newcastle. Before coming to Newcastle, I taught at the University of York and the University of Edinburgh. I have a PhD in American Studies from King’s College London (KCL) and a BA and MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art. My research and teaching explores LGBTQ+ and feminist art and art history from the 1970s to the present, mostly in Europe and the USA. I am particularly interested in art and art history in the context of the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis, how ephemeral queer cultures might be archived or otherwise preserved through art and writing, and the relationship between art and music.

My research explores queer art and art history from the 1970s to the present, mostly in Europe and the USA. I am particularly interested in queer art and art history in the context of the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis and how ephemeral queer cultures might be archived or otherwise preserved through art and writing.

I am the author of the book Cruising the Dead River: David Wojnarowicz and New York's Ruined Waterfront (University of Chicago Press, 2019), which examines the erotic and political roles that New York's post-industrial landscape played for various queer communities in the city. Telling the story of the piers as gentrification swept New York and before the AIDS crisis, Cruising the Dead River unearths buried histories of violence, regeneration, and LGBTQ activism that developed in and around this cruising scene. My writing has also been published in journals such as Third Text, Performance Research, Journal of American Studies, and Oxford Art Journal.

From 2016-2019, I was UK lead for Cruising the Seventies: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures (CRUSEV), a collaborative, international research project with partners in Spain, Poland, Germany and the UK which explored and reconstructed aspects of LGBTQ+ social and sexual cultures of the 1970s and examined their significance for LGBTQ+ people, queer organising, and queer artmaking across Europe in the present and future. CRUSEV was funded by Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA). In 2019-2020, I was CI on the project Enhancing Artists’ Livelihoods in East Africa: Art, Writing, Work (AHRC-GCRF), leading writing workshops with colleagues in Uganda and mentoring art writers.

My current research includes a special issue of British Art Studies on 'Queer Art in Britain Since the 1980s', co-edited with Flora Dunster, Theo Gordon, and Laura Guy, and a project looking at HIV/AIDS-related cultural production in the North East of England and regional approaches to histories of HIV/AIDS-related art, including work with colleagues in Brazil. Longer term, I am planning a book about music in the work of various British women artists, including Lubaina Himid, Sonia Boyce, and Tish Murtha. This work draws on my monthly radio show and club night Wildflowers, which explores country music, folk, and Americana from a queer feminist and global perspective. Wildflowers is broadcast on Slack's Radio, a community-led radio station based in The Lubber Fiend in Newcastle, where the club night also happens.

I am the Director of Research for the School of Art and Cultures.

I am Reviews Editor for Art History journal.

I teach at undergraduate and graduate level. At Newcastle, I teach Art History modules on feminist and queer approaches to modern and contemporary art, and art writing. In 2018 and 2021, I was shortlisted for a Newcastle University Teaching Excellence Award for Outstanding Contribution to Equality and Diversity in Teaching. I am a member of the School of Arts and Cultures Anti-Racist Curriculum Project team.

Undergraduate teaching 

Stage 1

• Art Histories I and Art Histories II

Stage 2

• Feminist and Queer Approaches to Modern and Contemporary Art

Stage 3

• Dissertation supervisor

Stage 4

• Art Writing

PhD supervision

I have experience supervising Art History and Fine Art practice-based PhD students. I welcome enquiries from potential PhD students working on topics relating to modern and contemporary art and queer history, HIV/AIDS and art, gentrification and art in the urban context, and art and queer archives.

Recent completions include Jez Coram, Aleksandra Gajowy, and Benny Nemer.

• Articles

  • Anderson F. Living Proof: Tracing HIV/AIDS Cultural Production in the North East of England. British Art Studies 2025. In Press.
  • Anderson F. 'Dogs of the world unite': Keith Haring and New York's canine imaginary. Oxford Art Journal 2024, 46(3), 451–469.
  • Anderson F. Please Help Yourself: Queer Preservation and the Uses of the Past. Third Text 2021, 35(1), 53-79.
  • Anderson F, Davis G, Raha N. Desire Revolution: Imagining Queer Europe. Third Text 2021, 35(1), 1-9.
  • Anderson F. Cruising the Queer Ruins of New York’s Abandoned Waterfront. Performance Research 2015, 20(3), 135-144.
  • Anderson F. An Unhemmed Dress: Popular Preservation and Civic Disobedience on the Manhattan Waterfront. Shima: The International Journal of Research Into Island Cultures 2015, 9(1), 18.
  • Anderson F. ‘‘A trail of drift and debris’: Traces of Whitman in the correspondence art of Ray Johnson'. Journal of American Studies 2015, 49(1), 55-75.
  • Anderson F. Notions of the Collaborative in the Work of David Wojnarowicz. Papers of Surrealism 2010, (8).

• Authored Book

  • Anderson F. Cruising the Dead River: David Wojnarowicz and New York's Ruined Waterfront. Chicago, USA: University of Chicago Press, 2019.

• Book Chapters

  • Anderson F. Intimate Topologies: Peter Hujar's Urban Landscapes. In: Peter Hujar: Eyes Open in the Dark. London: Raven Row, 2025.
  • Anderson F. Cruising with Sunil Gupta. In: Freed-Thall, H; González, O; Richards, J, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Queer Modernisms. Oxford University Press, 2025. Submitted.
  • Anderson F. Squirrels and standing stones. In: Marcus Jack, ed. Cinema Despite: Reviewing artists' film and video in Scotland. Glasgow: Transit Arts, 2023, pp.60.
  • Anderson F. Lavender Menace Revisited: In Conversation with Sigrid Nielsen, Bob Orr and James Ley. In: Davis, G; Guy, L, ed. Queer Print in Europe. Bloomsbury, 2022.
  • Anderson F. 'We Are Rarely Independent Structures': On Catrin Huber's work at Herculaneum. In: Catrin Huber, ed. Expanded Interiors at Herculaneum and Pompeii. Bielefeld/Berlin, Germany: Kerber Art, 2019.
  • Anderson F, Tobin A. Collaboration is Not An Alternative: Artists Working Together in London and New York, 1974–1981. In: Brown MA: Fisher MM, ed. Collaboration and Its (Dis)contents: Art, Architecture, and Photography Since 1950. London: Research Forum of The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2017, pp.158-178.

• Editorial

  • Anderson F. Dead Rivers And Day’s End: Cruising And Preserving New York’s Queer Imaginaries. The Gotham Center for New York City History 2021.

• Online Publication

  • Anderson F, Martin G. Portals: A Conversation between Fiona Anderson and Graham Martin. Huxley Parlour, 2022. Available at: https://huxleyparlour.com/critical-texts/a-conversation-between-fiona-anderson-and-graham-martin/.

• Reviews

  • Anderson F. Miriam Kienle, Queer Networks: Ray Johnson’s Correspondence Art. CAA Reviews 2024.
  • Anderson F. Preserving and politicising the alternative space. Oxford Art Journal 2015, 38(3), 448-451.
  • Anderson F. Dominic Johnson, Glorious Catastrophe: Jack Smith, Performance and Visual Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). Contemporary Theatre Review 2014, 24(1), 116-117.
  • Anderson F. eds. Lynne Cooke and Douglas Crimp, with Kristen Poor, Mixed Use Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the Present (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010). Immediations 2011, 2(4).
  • Anderson F. Paul Thek: Diver, a Retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Burlington Magazine 2010, 153(1294).
  • Anderson F. Sue-Ellen Case, Feminist and Queer Performance: Critical Strategies (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Contemporary Theatre Review 2009, 19(3).