Dr Kristen Sharp

Kristen is a researcher, writer and curator of contemporary art. Her research interests include contemporary art and urban space, contemporary Asian art, and collaborative art practices in transnational projects. Kristen's publications include Screen Ecologies: Art, Media and the Environment in the Asia-Pacific Region (with Hjorth, Pink and Williams, MIT Press, 2016), Re-imagining the City (co-edited with Grierson, Intellect, 2013) and Sounds of Weather (with Musashino Art University, Tokyo 2013). 

Kristen was a CI on an Australian Research Council Linkage grant, Spatial Dialogues: public art and climate change, researching public art and social media collaborations responding to climate change. The project was located across Melbourne Shanghai and Tokyo (with Williams, Hjorth, Samartzis, Perry and Redfern) 2010-2013. She co-curated (with Samartzis) The Sonic City for the 14th Liquid Architecture National Sound Art Festival 2013, involving established and emerging sound artists from Australia, Spain and Japan. 

In addition to publications and collaborative research projects, Kristen is an invited speaker, writer and peer-reviewer on contemporary Asian art, transcultural art practices and art in urban environments. She has also co-convened a number of innovative and inter-disciplinary research symposiums reframing the relationship between contemporary arts practice and global urban space, drawing together Australian and international researchers. She continues to develop art projects in the Asia-Pacific region with artists responding to the material, social and symbolic spaces of the city.

Research member

• CAST (Contemporary Art and Social Transformation) Research Group: Migration + Mobilities group
• Digital Ethnography Research Centre, RMIT University
• Urban Futures EIP
• Design & Creative Practice EIP

Research supervision

Registered Category 1 supervisor.

Areas of research supervision

Contemporary Art, Asian Art (esp. Japan and China), Collaboration, Public Art, Art and Urban Space, Environmental Art, Globalisation and Art and Sound Art.

• PhD RMIT University, 2007
• Diploma Teaching (Secondary) University of Auckland, 1997
• Bachelor of Fine Arts (Printmaking/Art History) Elam School of Fine Arts University of Auckland, 1996

Professional memberships:

• AAANZ
• Royal Anthropological Society
• Asian art academics and curators in Australia and New Zealand
• Asian Australian Studies Research Network (AASRN)
• Japan Art History Forum (JAHF)
• Co-leader, Our Place, Knox City Council Youth Services, funded by Urban Futures ECP (2019)
  
• Co-convenor, SPEAKER, artist talk series, School of Art (2017-2019)
• Co-curator, The Sonic City (2013), Liquid Architecture National Sound Art Festival (www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/). 
• Board Member, Liquid Architecture (2013)
• International Visiting Researcher (2012), Musashino Art University (Department of Imaging Arts and Sciences), Tokyo.
• Cultural Studies Association, Member (2003-2006)