Bergit Arends

I am a curator of contemporary art and academic with research interests in the intersections of material culture, art history, and environmental history within European and global contexts.I have curated many contemporary art projects for the natural history museums in London and Berlin (Art/Nature 2019).

I was British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and at University of Bristol. I gained my PhD at Royal Holloway, where I studied in the departments of Geography and Drama, Theatre & Dance. I am currently Curatorial Research Fellow in the UK Research and Innovation Network Plus ‘Shifting Global Polarities: Russia, China and Eurasia in transition’ and Research Associate in CoastARTS.

My curatorial and academic research informs my performance-based research for CoastARTS, a multi-national research project that brings together artists and academics from Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and the UK to explore arts-based methods for addressing complex ecocultural crises in North Atlantic coastal zones.

My monograph Photography, Ecology and Historical Change in the Anthropocene: Activating Archives (2024) is part of the Routledge series Photography, Place, Environment. My doctoral research resulted among other in the award-winning publication Chrystel Lebas. Field Studies (2018).