Skip to main content

Staff Profile

Dr Emma Coffield

Background

Background

Emma Coffield is a Lecturer in the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University and the Deputy Degree Programme Director for the MA programmes in Curating Art, Museum Studies and Global Heritage Management. She has an AHRC sponsored PhD in Museum Studies, an MA in Art Museum and Gallery Education (both from Newcastle University) and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art (Painting and Printmaking) from the Glasgow School of Art.

Emma's research focuses on artist-run/led initiatives and forms of self-organisation in the arts. This has led to a number of recent projects on and around the issue of meanwhile space in the arts, and the ways in which 'employability' might be understood and experienced by students and recent graduates in the cultural and creative industries.


Working groups:

The 'Collaborate' Steering Group with colleagues from the NewBridge Project (https://thenewbridgeproject.com/events/the-collective-studio/)


Previous roles and responsibilities:

  • Employability and Enterprise Lead for SACS (2019-2022)
  • SACS Athena Swan committee (2017-18)
  • Co-convenor of the Cultural Significance of Place Faculty Research Group (2012-18)


Research

Research outline

For over 15 years, Emma has worked with a variety of artist-run/led initiatives and self-organised practices - or informal groups, collectives and grassroots organisations run by and for artists - in the UK. Her work has tended to focus on new readings and understandings of these initiatives and their importance to the cultural sector. More recently, Emma has led a number of transdisciplinary projects exploring the impact and experience of 'meanwhile space' on artists. These projects bring artists, academics and local policy-makers together in order to foster long-term, co-developed futures. You can find out more about this work here: https://morethanmeanwhile.wordpress.com Currently, Emma is working on two projects that aim to engage grassroots artists with the North of Tyne Cultural and Creative Zones (now Creative Central Ncl), FLOURISH, a multidisciplinary, collaborative project that surveys and critically re-imagines urban creative and cultural activity in Gateshead (led by Dr Rebecca Prescott), and a challenge-based project led by Dr Paul Richter that aims to articulate the 'impact' of The NewBridge Project.

Emma has also worked for a number of years with Dr Katie Markham to develop critical understandings of 'employability' in the cultural and creative industries, and to understand how teaching for employability is experienced by students and recent graduates.

Emma has co-authored a reader in museum and gallery studies (Art Museum and Gallery Studies: The Basics with Prof Rhiannon Mason and Dr Alistair Robinson in 2018) and other articles that consider the dynamics at play in the gallery space.


Recent projects

Co-I - Analysing hyperlocal impacts of artistic/cultural organisations: The case of The NewBridge Project (£10,000) Funded by the School Challenge Based Fund (SCBRF), Newastle University Business School. April-June 2024 with Dr Paul Richter, Prof Alison Stenning and The NewBridge Project.

Co-I - Developing and Understanding The Environment Within Which Creative Initiatives Can Flourish (£165,000) UK Government Strategic Prosperity Fund. May 2023-May 2025 with Dr Rebecca Prescott, Dr Zander Wilson and project partners Gateshead Metropolitain Borough Council, the National Trust, Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust, Newcastle University and Northumbria University. https://www.flourishgateshead.com/

Co-I - Engaging grassroots arts practitioners with the North of Tyne Cultural and Creative Zones (CCZs) (£13,351) Funded by QR Policy Support Fund. Jan 2023-June 2024 with Rachel Pattinson and Dr Loes Veldpaus. Research Assistant: Daniel Newberry

Co-I - Collaborate: Skills and talent development pathways for creative practitioners (£534,446) Funded by the North of Tyne Investment Fund. June 2022 - May 2025 with the NewBridge Project and Newcastle University.

PI - Engaging the Grassroots Art Sector with the Clayton Street Corridor (£15,334.90) Funded by Newcastle City Council. March 2022-December 2022 with Dr Paul Richter, Dr Rebecca Prescott, David Butler, Dr Loes Veldpaus, Prof Venda Pollock, Andrew Rothwell, Ed Banks, Rebecca Huggan, Tom Hopkin, Lee Etherington, Nadia Iftkhar. Research Assistants: Hannah Marsden and Daniel Newberry https://morethanmeanwhile.wordpress.com/the-clayton-street-corridor/ (Extended until April 2025)

PI - Re-thinking employability during COVID-19: Exploring graduate outcomes and experiences in the museum, gallery and heritage sector (£1,364) SACS Funded. March 2020-December 2020 with Dr Katie Markham (PI) and Jess Crossby (Co-I).

PI - More Than Meanwhile Collaboration (£5,000). ESRC IAA, October 2020 - March 2021 with Dr Paul Richter, Rebecca Huggan, David Butler, Dr Rebecca Prescott, and The NewBridge Project. Research Assistant: Dr Alix Ferrer-Yulfo

Co-I - Mapping Gateshead (£7,598.85). ESRC IAA, November 2020 - March 2021 with Dr Rebecca Prescott, Dr Alexander Wilson, Gateshead Council and GT3 Architects. https://www.flourishgateshead.com/work-1/mappinggateshead

PI - More Than Meanwhile Spaces II (£11,509.28). ESRC IAA, April 2019 - March 2020 with Dr Paul Richter, Rebecca Huggan, David Butler, Dr Edward Wainwright, Dr Rebecca Prescott, The NewBridge Project and Newcastle City Council. Research Assistants: Dan Goodman and Julie Monroe https://morethanmeanwhile.wordpress.com/mtms-ii/

PI - Beyond Employability: Enabling Professional Cultural Identities (£9,506). SACS funded, April 2018 - July 2019

PI - More Than Meanwhile Spaces: Long-Term Business Models for Artists in the City (£5,075). ESRC IAA, March 2018-March 2019 with Dr Paul Richter, Rebecca Huggan, David Butler, Dr Edward Wainwright, Dr Rebecca Prescott and The NewBridge Project. Research Assistant: Dr Katie Markham https://morethanmeanwhile.wordpress.com/mtms-i/

PI - Early Career Academic Fellowship. SACS funded, September 2018-May 2020.

Co-I - Paths Across Waters (£3,214). Being Human (incl. SSRF/HCA grants). March 2017 - November 2017

RA - Artist Rooms Interfaces (£2,206) SSRF funded with Professor Christopher Whitehead. June 2015 - May 2016. 


Exhibitions

Paths Across Waters: Lost Stories of Tyneside and the Caribbean (2017) - An exhibition and event series designed and curated in collaboration with Dr Vanessa Mongey (History Classics and Archaeology) and Old Low Light Heritage Centre as part of Being Human, the UK's only national festival of the humanities. 

Newcastle City Futures: People Place Change (2015) - A multi-media exhibition and events series with colleagues Prof. Mark Tewdwr-Jones, Anne Fry, Dhruv Sookhoo and David Mitchell (School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape) that explored built (and unbuilt) heritage in Newcastle/Gateshead in the post 1940s up to the present. Winner of the Royal Town Planning Institutes's 'Chair's Award' in 2015. The project also informed the report Newcastle City Futures 2065: Anchoring Universities in Cities through Urban Foresight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhsNsS4iHZU


Teaching

Current teaching

Emma primarily teaches on a variety of postgraduates modules associated with the MA programmes in Curating Art, Museum Studies and Global Heritage Management, including:

  • MCH8611 Contemporary Curating: Ethics, Sites, Histories (module co-leader)
  • MCH8502 Management Practices in Mumeums, Galleries and Heritage Sites (module leader)
  • MCH8503 Understanding Objects, Collections and Stories
  • MCH8551 Curating Art in the Gallery (module co-leader)
  • MCH8599 Research Dissertation 
  • MCH8600 25 Day Placement 


Emma also supervises postgraduate dissertations in Media and Public Relations (MCH8199), undergraduate dissertations in Journalism and Media (MCH3072), Media (3073) and Digital Cultures (3005), and contributes to teaching in the Design Studio for the MA in Urban Design (ARC8115).


PhD Supervision

Emma has supervised the following PhD students to completion:

  • Dr Daniel Goodman (Thesis title: System Gallery: What's the Point?)


Previous teaching

In the past, Emma led the MA in Art Museum and Gallery Studies, and contributed broadly to teaching across the Art Museum and Gallery, Museum Studies and Heritage Studies MA degree programmes then offered by Media, Culture, Heritage (MCH), including:

  • MCH8501 - Understanding Challenges
  • MCH8504 - Caring for Collections
  • MCH8599 - Research Dissertation 
  • MCH600 - Professional Practice and Research
  • MCH601 - Vocationally Orientated Project
  • MCH8551 - Working on a Project: Art Museum and Gallery Studies (module leader)
  • MCH8502 - Management Practices (module leader)
  • MCH8516 - Museum, Gallery, Heritage Practice (module leader)
  • Art Museum and Gallery Education 1(module leader)
  • Art Museums and Gallery Education 2 (module leader)
  • ICS8005 - Art Curatorship 1: Working with histories, objects and agendas (module co-leader)
  • ICS8006 - Art Curatorship 2: Exhibitions and exhibiting (module co-leader)


Emma supported students to produce the following public exhibitions:

  • The Possibility Of... (Laing Art Gallery, 2016)
  • S[he] (Laing Art Gallery, 2017)
  • Headspace (Laing Art Gallery, 2018)
  • Shifting Styles (The Hatton Gallery, 2020 - cancelled due to COVID-19)


Emma further previously contributed to teaching in Art History (Fine Art), the Showcase OFFSITE module offered by HaSS to creative practice PhD researchers, co-designed the ICCHS MA e-learning course, and the PARTNERS Summer School.


Awards

Emma completed the Newcastle Teaching Award in 2019 and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.



Publications