Professor Gemma Blackshaw

Gemma Blackshaw specialises in Austrian art from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a particular focus on that produced in Vienna around 1900. Her specific interests lie in: the nexus between Viennese modernism and the modern subject's experience of illness and disease; the exhibition and reception history of fin-de-siècle Viennese art; artists' networks in the 19th and early 20th centuries, their role in the development of portraiture and figuration, and the promotion of artists' careers. She has worked as a guest curator on a number of exhibitions in the UK and in Austria including Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900 at the National Gallery (2013) and Madness & Modernity: Mental Illness and the Visual Arts at the Wellcome Collection (2009) and Wien Museum (2010). Her research has been supported by the AHRC, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the Wellcome Trust. Current projects include a monograph, Clinical Modernism, on the connections between art, medicine and experience in Vienna in the early 20th century, and contributions to an international collaborative research project, Edvard Munch, Modernism, and Medicine. Gemma Blackshaw is interested in supervising students at ResM and PhD level who would like to pursue projects in areas of her research interests.