Uncharted

UNCHARTED LOGO high

Understanding, Capturing and Fostering the Societal Value of Culture

Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Goldsmiths, University of London, traces its roots to 1792, and it joined the University of London in 1904. Goldsmiths is proud of its reputation for innovative and challenging thinking across its wide range of disciplines. One of its major strengths is its interdisciplinary ethos – the way in which departments, centres, and units interrelate to offer new perspectives and insights.

Key personnel

Victoria D. Alexander – Professor of Sociology and Arts Management, Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship, Goldsmiths University of London. Her research contributes to sociology of the arts, visual culture, sociology of organisations, sociology of culture, cultural policy, and arts management. She has studied the funding of art museums, arts policy, sociology of the arts, neighbourhoods, mixed methods, and visual sociology. Current research includes legitimation in aesthetic fields, user-generated reviews of cultural attractions, sociology of the arts, and cultural policy. She is currently on the Advisory Board of the European Sociological Association’s Research Network on the Sociology of the Arts and is active on several international journal management boards. She is author of Sociology of the Arts: Exploring Fine and Popular Forms (2003; 2020) and Museums and Money: The Impact of Funding on Exhibitions, Scholarship, and Management (1996), co-author of Art and the State: The Visual Arts in Comparative Perspective (2005), and co-editor of the multi-volume Art and the Challenge of Markets (2018). 

Oonagh Murphy

Oonagh Murphy –  international best practice on the scalability of emerging technologies for cultural organisations. Oonagh is Principal Investigator and co-founder of the Museums + AI Network, which is funded through an AHRC Network Grant. The Network was established in 2019 with Pratt Institute (New York), National Gallery (London) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). She is a regular contributor to museum sector forums on digital culture, innovation and management, and has been invited to speak at leading cultural centres in the UK, Europe and US, including The Barbican Centre, V&A, National Theatre, the Belevedere, New Museum.

Oliver Peterson Gilbert Photo2
Oliver Peterson Gilbert – UNCHARTED Research Associate, Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship, Goldsmiths University of London. His research centres on the sociology of music and art, cultural policy, curatorial practice, and cultural history.  Prior to joining Goldsmiths, he was a Senior Arts Policy Advisor in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) developing UK cultural policy for visual and performing arts. He previously held academic posts at King’s College London, Birkbeck, University of London, University of Southampton, and the Open University, alongside a research role at Tate’s Curatorial Practice and Museology Research Centre. Oliver’s published research outputs have explored histories of British post-war artistic and musical communities, the digital mediation of live music and DJ performances, the distribution of art gallery experiences via live cinema releases, and a sequence of policy reports mapping the creative start-up ecosystem in England. He has curated exhibitions exploring the relationship between visual art and music, including the representation of modern jazz musicians by artists and the relationship between art schools, performance art, and popular music in the 1970s.
Sosa-Uncharted

Cecilia Sosa – Argentinean sociologist and cultural journalist. She currently works as a postdoctoral researcher for the UNCHARTED project at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the co-curator and co-scripter of the documentary film Cantos Insumisos [Rebel Songs] (2023, dir. Alejo Moguillanksy), which was made as part of the AHRC Screening Violence Project (University of Newcastle). She has been part of many collaborative projects on Transnational Memory, Museums and the Archives. Her PhD in Drama (Queen Mary, University of London) was awarded with the AHGBI best thesis publication prize. Her first monograph is entitled Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship (Tamesis Books, 2014) and has published extensively at the crossroads of Cultural Memory, Affect and the Arts. She is the co-editor of the volume Entre/telones y pantallas. Afectos y saberes en la performance Argentina contemporánea (Buenos Aires: Libraria, 2020).