Staff Profile

Katarzyna Falęcka (BA Courtauld Institute of Art, MA University of Oxford, PhD University College London) is Lecturer in Art History. Her research and teaching interests span modern and contemporary art from North Africa, West Asia and Europe, archives, gender and memory, and postcolonial methodologies.

Her first book, tentatively titled Archival Excavations: Photography, the Algerian War of Independence and the Afterlives of Images, discusses the work of contemporary artists who engage with the photographic archives of the Algerian War of Independence. The book situates their engagements with these collections in relation to restitution debates between Algeria and France. Other research projects include an exploration of how contemporary artists in North Africa and West Asia work through and reimagine histories of postcolonial state formation, as well as a long-term project focused on artistic exchanges between artists from the African continent and the former Eastern Bloc during the Global Cold War.

Falęcka co-leads the CAORC/Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Modern Art History at the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT), which aims to assist graduate students, scholars and professionals in the arts with developing research projects related to modern art in the Maghrib, and to facilitate knowledge exchange in the region. As part of the programme, she serves as interviewer for the Modern Art in the Maghrib podcast series. In 2021, she curated Beyond Metaphor: Women and War at apexart in New York, an Open Call winning exhibition. The show featured works by Marwa Arsanios, Kader Attia, Katia Kameli, Nadja Makhlouf and Zineb Sedira that explore women's experiences during the Algerian War of Independence.

Prospective PhD students working on modern and contemporary art, colonialism, archives, gender, memory, transregional cultural exchanges, and photography are welcome to submit a research proposal.

Stage 1

Art Histories I

Art Histories II

Cultures and Histories of Display

Stages 2 and 3

Histories of Photography

Contemporary Art and Globalisation

Dissertation Supervision

PhD Supervision

Paulina Michnowska, 'Tracing Memory: Clay in Relation to an Endangered Rainforest Sign Language of the Penan Hunter-Gatherers. Proposing an Aesthetic Practice as Means of Ethnographic Research', co-supervised with Professor Andrew Burton.

Other 

Photography Forum

• Articles

  • Falecka K. Woman as Battleground: Marc Garanger's Identity Photographs from Algeria and their Long Afterlives. Third Text 2023, 37(1), 44-60.
  • Falecka K. Archiving the Algerian Revolution in Zineb Sedira's Gardiennes d'images . African Arts 2022, 55(3), 38-53.

• Book Chapter

  • Falecka K. Monika Weiss: Biography. In: Halina Gajewska, Barry Keane, ed. Monika Weiss - Nirbhaya. Orońsko: Centre for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko Press, 2021.

• Online Publications

  • Falecka K. Beyond Metaphor: Women and War. New York: apexart, 2021. Available at: https://apexart.org/Beyond-Metaphor-essay-ENG.php.
  • Falecka K. “Whoever owns heritage is a temporary custodian”: an interview with Akram Zaatari. Berlin: TRAFO - Blog for Transregional Research, 2020. Available at: https://trafo.hypotheses.org/25746.

• Reviews

  • Falecka K. Photography as Relation in Africa. Art History 2022, 45(1), 207-213.
  • Falecka K. Future Imperfect. Contemporary Art Practice and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East. Journal of Arabian Studies 2017, 7(1), 119-121.