Edward Christie

I am a Research and Engagement Fellow at the St Andrews Centre for Critical Sustainabilities (StACCS).

With my background in ecocritical art history, I aim to foster the potential for engagement with the arts and culture to instigate more effective and holistic responses to climate change. Much of my research has addressed the intersectional connections between environmentalism and diverse forms of social politics including feminism, anti-racism, Indigenism, LGBTQIA+ rights, and anarchism. My other areas of interest include greenwashing and the relationship between sustainability and health.

Previously, I was an Associate Lecturer in the School of Art History at St Andrews, where I developed research and taught a range of postgraduate and undergraduate courses on modern and contemporary art. I completed my PhD at UCL, where I was involved with several research initiatives that centred on sustainability. For instance, I worked as Project Coordinator to help establish UCL Anthropocene – a network that brings together researchers from across disciplines to articulate and address the problems that the Anthropocene poses for our collective future. Among other contributions, I hosted a lecture series titled 'Cultural Ecology: Galvanising Climate Action Across the Arts' that addressed how cultural researchers might effectively respond to the inadequacy of the solutions to climate change generally being set into motion by governments and corporations. Other collaborations included my role as Co-Chair of the Environment-Domain Early-Career Network (EDEN) and work as a Research Assistant on an initiative tited 'The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Contributions from the Humanities'.

Critical sustainabilities, inter- and transdisciplinarity, modern and contemporary art, greenwashing, intersectionality, planetary health, and extractivism.

I am currently working on two main research projects. The first, 'The Art of Oil: Modernism and the Rise of the Petroleum Industry', investigates the relationship between the development of the oil sector and modernist aesthetics. The second, 'Land Art and the Politics of Reclamation', critically explores the widespread commissioning of Land artworks by extractivist industries to fulfil their legal requirements to restore exploited landscapes.

These projects have developed from my PhD research, which I completed in November 2023. My thesis, which is titled 'Mobilising Post-War Eco Art History Against the Climate Crisis', critically revises established narratives on post-war art and the environment in light of the recent proliferation of discourse on the so-called 'Anthropocene' – a term that controversially refers to the present geological epoch in which humans are profoundly impacting the Earth's planetary conditions due to our mass combustion of fossil fuels. Challenging the conventional conception of nature as being divided from culture, each chapter explores the intersection of environmentalism with diverse forms of social politics through the lenses of works by the following artists: Agnes Denes (feminism), Rasheed Araeen (anti-racism), Juan Downey (Indigenism), Derek Jarman (LGBTQIA+ rights), and the Kyūshū-ha (anarchism).

During my previous role as an Associate Lecturer in the School of Art History, I taught various postgraduate and undergraduate modules including 'Art History and Envrionmental Crisis' (Honours), 'Approaches to Art History' (co-taught with Dr Catherine Spencer) (Honours), and 'Object Lessons in Photography' (co-taught with Dr Marika Knowles and Dr Luke Gartlan) (MLitt). I received a Golden Dandelion Award for my 'Art History and Environmental Crisis' course, which recognises 'excellence in education for sustainable development'.