About Me

Dr Rebecca Bell is a writer, researcher, educator and artist. She lectures in the school of Art & Design at UWE Bristol. Rebecca holds a PhD in Czech craft and design under Socialism from the Victoria and Albert Museum and Royal College of Art (RCA). Her research concerned making for the state under restrictive political circumstances, in textiles, glass, ceramics and fashion, through object-based and oral history approaches.

Rebecca obtained an MA (Hons) and MPhil in History of Art from the University of Glasgow. She worked in galleries and museums for ten years, receiving a scholarship placement with the Hunterian Gallery Glasgow and working for Andy Goldsworthy for three years assisting with his archive and studio. On moving to London she became Artist’s Resale Right Manager at DACS, then Programme Coordinator for Art on the Underground. Rebecca ran the Curating in Contemporary Art and Design Summer School at the Royal College of Art from 2015-2019.

Rebecca has lectured in contextual studies and visual culture at a range of institutions, including Middlesex University, UMPRUM Prague, NYU, the London College of Fashion, University of Hertfordshire, The School of Life, and the Royal College of Art.

In her current practice, she uses drawing as a method of research, exploring relationships to text and landscape, with a particular interest in ideas of embodiment, eco-empathy, and connections with the more-than-human. She is currently exploring sensation-based practices and ideas of making in times of unmaking through drawing, writing and teaching methodologies. She is also curating a collaborative project with 19 makers across disciplines and demographies, focusing on ideas of embodied daily practice (see more here), which will result in an artist book produced with the Centre for Print Research, Bristol (funded by the UWE New Starters Research scheme).

Rebecca is a steering group member and interim co-lead of the UWE Visual and Material Practices Research group (VAMP), which is a group of cross-disciplinary art and design practitioners, historians and theorists interested in visualities and material cultures. Through the latter she is part of the editorial team for the the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice. She is currently working on collaborative research projects with cultural institutions in the Czech Republic and Hungary, and in 2020 co-founded a Pedagogies of Hope research working group, which focused on locating notions of care, nourishment and hope in structures of higher education, working with researchers and educators across the UK.

Rebecca’s research focuses on making practices under politically controlled conditions, craft methodologies, pastoral materialities and pedagogies of hope. She has published on art, craft and design for a variety of publications including The Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, West 86th Journal, The Journal of Modern Craft, Artforum Magazine, Home Cultures Journal, the Central and Eastern European London Review, and co-edited publications such as The Roundel: 100 Artists Remake a London Icon (2013). She also co-translated the first Czech edition of Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea.

Image: Burn of Boardhouse concertina, ink and holy well water. Created on site at 6am in Orkney as part of the Museum of Loss and Renewal Drawing With Place residency, 2024