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Professor Elizabeth Grierson

Key activities

Elizabeth Grierson is Professor of Art and Philosophy at RMIT University Melbourne. International appointments include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK); World Councillor (S.E. Asia–Pacific Region) of InSEA International Society of Education through Art; Adjunct Professor at AUT in NZ; Board member of ACUADS Australia Council of University Art and Design Schools, and Art Education Australia; and past international committee member of Global Studies Association (UK). She is a research leader of RMIT Design Research Institute flagship program, The Mediated City (2011), and Intervention through Art program (2008-2010), and for two years led Art and Urbanism projects in the Globalization and Culture Program of RMIT Global Cities Research Institute. Professor Grierson was the Head of School of Art at RMIT from 2005 to 2012. Prior to her RMIT appointment she was Head of Research at AUT School of Art and Design in NZ, National President of ANZAAE Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Art Educators (two terms 2001-2005), Chair of the Royal Society of Arts, undertook a number of advisory roles in visual arts education, was an active exhibiting artist, writer and educator, and spent a year at University of Brighton, UK, as a Visiting Research Fellow.

Elizabeth gained a PhD in the philosophy of education from the University of Auckland, The Politics of Knowledge: A poststructuralist approach to visual arts education in tertiary sites, MA (1st Class Hons.) in Art History, The Art of Louise Henderson 1925-1990, and BA in English Language and Literature (University of Auckland). She has a Diploma of Teaching (Auckland College of Education), Licentiate Diploma of Speech and Drama (NZ Speech Board), and Associate of Trinity College London in Speech and Drama (University of London). Elizabeth started her teaching career in English and Drama, retrained in art to become an experienced secondary and tertiary teacher in Art and Art History setting up programs and courses in art history, theory and philosophy. Following training in fine art she lectured at ASA School of Art in Auckland and became Head of School in 1994 and led the transfer of the ASA visual arts programs to Auckland University of Technology in 1996, where she spent the next nine years in senior leadership. She has been Head of RMIT School of Art since 2005.

Elizabeth is an experienced supervisor of postgraduate research projects and continues with doctorate supervision in her present position. She is internationally known for her scholarship on art as an epistemological, ontological and aesthetic site of knowledge in the creative economies of globalization; and is known for her advocacy work for education through the creative arts. She is an experienced debater and public speaker having won debating awards and represented New Zealand in the 1980 world public speaking contest for International Training in Communication, and continues to be in demand to speak at events and exhibitions, and to judge awards. She was an invited speaker at the Regional Meeting of Experts on Arts Education in the Pacific, in Fiji 2002, and the UNESCO World Summit for the Arts in Education, Lisbon, Portugal 2006, a keynote speaker at InSEA World Congress at Viçeu, Portugal in 2006, and Osaka, Japan in 2008, and an invited panel speaker at the World Creativity Summits at Taipei, Taiwan in 2008, and Newcastle, UK, 2009, and invited speaker to UNESCO Second World Conference for Arts Education in Seoul, 2010. She is an international referee for many scholarly journals and publications, an International Reader for Australia Research Council, Executive Editor of the top tier refereed journal ACCESS: Critical Perspectives on Communication, Cultural & Policy Studies, Consulting Editor of Educational Philosophy and Theory, and editorial board member of Australian Art Education and International Journal of Education through Art. In 2009 Elizabeth was appointed to the Advisory Committee of ACARA Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, for the arts in the new Australian Curriculum, and in 2010 she is the ACARA appointed visual arts expert for the writing of the Initial Advice Paper and Shaping Paper for the Arts in the Australian National Curriculum.

Elizabeth Grierson was lead Chief Investigator on a three-year ARC Linkage project with St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, Designing Sound for Health and Wellbeing, working with a team of academics, artists and medical researchers to bring art and emergency medicine together (2008-2010); and in 2008 she led the successful Kaldor Public Art Project at the RMIT Alumni Courtyard with the installation of work by Martin Boyce, Scotland’s representative at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Elizabeth draws from her extensive experience in the arts and education in her writing and publications, which largely focus on the philosophy of art and education, creative methodologies, cultural politics, urban aesthetics and globalisation.