Profiles
Karen Hall
Karen Hall
Lecturer in Theory
Art | School of Creative Arts and Media
School of Creative Arts and Media
Room IA197 , Stone Building
+61 3 6324 4413 (phone)
Dr Karen Hall is a lecturer in Art Theory at the School of Creative Arts and Media at the Inveresk campus. Her research explores connections between past and present within the Tasmanian landscape, examining the interplay of cultural and environmental changes through her individual practice and collaborative projects. Karen has taught in a range of areas, from art and performance theory and histories to the material and visual cultures of family history. She has lead significant curriculum changes and prioritises inclusion through her teaching.
Biography
Karen joined the University of Tasmania after completing her PhD at the University of Western Australia. Joining the then School of Visual and Performing Arts, Karen developed and delivered new units in art and performance history and theory. Karen has subsequently taken on the role of Associate Head, Learning and Teaching for the School of Creative Arts and Media (2018-2020).
Karen has become highly involved in the local arts ecology, including taking up the position of Chair of Sawtooth ARI (2015-2016). These connections inform her commitment to place-based learning and research.
Career summary
Qualifications
| Degree | Title of Thesis | University | Country | Awarded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PhD | Discovering the Lost Race Story: Writing Science Fiction, Writing Temporality | University of Western Australia | Australia | 2008 |
| BA (Hons) | University of Western Australia | Australia | 2002 |
Memberships
Professional practice
- Tasmanian representative for the Art Association for Australia and New Zealand
Administrative expertise
As Associate Head, Learning and Teaching, for the School of Creative Arts and Media (2018-2020), Karen provided leadership for significant curriculum redevelopment in multiple degrees as well as supporting good teaching practices across the School.
Teaching
Art theory, curatorial practice, curatorial studies
Teaching expertise
Karen has developed and taught units in critical practices and theory for visual and performing arts students. She has also contributed to teaching in family history, with a focus on material and visual cultures in family history, and in creative arts and health. Karen has supervised professional and research Honours students in fine arts.
Karen is passionate about creating a welcoming and inclusive learning environment, supporting students through the transition to university, and developing authentic learning activities that have direct relevance to students.
Teaching responsibility
Research Invitations
Karen has collaborated with Tasmanian arts organisations and institutions, and worked with academics at other universities in Australia and the United Kingdom.
View more on Dr Karen Hall in WARP
Expertise
- contemporary art
- site-specific art
- memory and heritage
- regional arts
- medievalism
- scholarship of tertiary teaching and learning
Karen’s research explores how the past is reimagined in the present, with particular attention to the interwinnings of cultural and environmental change. Since moving to Tasmania, Karen’s research has interrogated how Tasmanian convict and colonial heritage is negotiated through ephemeral and site-specific contemporary art.
Karen’s research methods include archival and site-based research, collaborative practice-led research, and curatorial practice.
Through her engagement with local arts ecologies and focus on place-based teaching, Karen is increasingly interested in regional arts policy and practices.
Areas of Research Expertise
Collaboration
In the Kerry Lodge Art and Archeology project, Karen partnered with archaeologists from the University of Manchester, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and the Launceston Historical Society to bring artists on site during the excavation of a convict field station, generating creative works that engage with the processes of archeogical fieldwork as well as the site’s history. Exhibitions resulting from this project were shown at Sawtooth ARI (Launceston), Franklin House (National Trust, Launceston), on site as part of Ten Days on the Island (2017), and in the Frank Moran Memorial Hall, QUT.
Awards
Whitfeld Fellowship, a six-month part-time postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Western Australia, 2008
Current projects
Karen is currently developing a scholarship of teaching and learning research project on the experiences of student belonging during on-campus building works. This project asks how students navigate a sense of place and community through physical changes and disruptions to their learning environment, and aims to document effective ways to enhance student engagement and belonging during building.
Fields of Research
- Fine arts (360602)
- Visual arts (360699)
- Art criticism (360101)
- Creative arts, media and communication curriculum and pedagogy (390101)
- Art theory (360103)
- Other creative arts and writing (369999)
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music and performing arts (450111)
- Education systems (390399)
- Sociology of education (390203)
- Learning sciences (390409)
- Rural sociology (441003)
Research Objectives
- The creative arts (130103)
- Pedagogy (160302)
- Assessment, development and evaluation of curriculum (160301)
- Other education and training (169999)
- Rehabilitation or conservation of terrestrial environments (180604)
- Music (130102)
Publications
Karen’s publications demonstrate the range of her research interests, and include curatorial non-traditional research outcomes as well as written publication. Scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) publications focus on place-based curriculum and learning.
Total publications
6
Journal Article
(2 outputs)| Year | Citation | Altmetrics |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Hall K, Sutczak P, 'Boots on the ground: site-based regionality and creative practice in the Tasmanian Midlands', M/C Journal, 22, (3) Article 1537. ISSN 1441-2616 (2019) [Refereed Article] Co-authors: Sutczak P | |
| 2014 | Hall K, Finlayson M, 'Unfinished Business: craft and revivification', Craft and Design Enquiry, (6) pp. 61-73. ISSN 1837-445X (2014) [Refereed Article] Co-authors: Finlayson M |
Chapter in Book
(1 outputs)| Year | Citation | Altmetrics |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Hall K, 'Encounter, Fragment, Reuse', International Medievalism and Popular Culture, Cambria Press, Louise D'Arcens & Andrew Lynch (ed), Amherst, NY, pp. 107-124. ISBN 9781604978643 (2014) [Research Book Chapter] |
Conference Publication
(2 outputs)| Year | Citation | Altmetrics |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Fountain W, Hall K, Wise K, Tregloan K, 'Curricula of value - in place and in service', ACUADS Conference Program, 28-29 September 2017, Canberra, ACT, pp. 1-12. (2017) [Refereed Conference Paper] Co-authors: Fountain W; Wise K | |
| 2014 | Hall KP, 'Starting In Place: a preliminary investigation of first year curriculum design in response to critical regionalism', Proceedings of the Teaching Matters 2014 Conference, 2-3 December 2014, Newnham Campus, University of Tasmania, pp. 30-36. (2014) [Non Refereed Conference Paper] |
Major Creative Work
(1 outputs)| Year | Citation | Altmetrics |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Hall KP, 'earthspoke', Sawtooth ARI (2015) [Curated Exhibition] |
Grants & Funding
Funding Summary
Number of grants
2
Total funding
Projects
- Description
- The built environments within which the 12,500 female convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in the nineteenth century were incarcerated have largely been destroyed, often leaving nothing more than barely discernible traces of foundations. The purpose of the app will be to reinscribe the stories of the 832 Ross Female Factory women back into this barren locale. Our app will link richly-detailed archival records with place, acting as a prototype for a new digital approach to the interpretation of Tasmanian convict sites and convict history more generally. This project will situate Tasmania at the cutting edge of historical interpretation while simultaneously creating the necessary pedagogical tools to enable the wider public to engage with our local and regional aspects of the global story of forced penal migration, punishment, reproduction and settlement.
- Funding
- University of Tasmania ($13,118)
- Scheme
- Grant - CALE Hothouse Alignment Scheme
- Administered By
- University of Tasmania
- Research Team
- Thomas AA; Zarmati LFC; Harman KE; Clarke RGH; Hall KP; Keating MJ
- Year
- 2018
- Description
- This project will build on a program of ecological restoration plantings in Ross, a community in Midlands, Tasmania. It will test the impact of creative practice as a catalyst for engagement with restoration ecology initiatives through the conceptual development, production, and implementation of creative works, and evaluate the Ross pilot research through cycles of qualitative stakeholder feedback embedded in community engagement activities, and quantitative evaluation of the functionality of objects within the restoration plantings.
- Funding
- University of Tasmania ($2,090)
- Scheme
- Grant-CAL Hothouse Research Enhancement Program
- Administered By
- University of Tasmania
- Research Team
- Hall KP; Sutczak PR; Bailey TG; Burgess S
- Year
- 2017
Research Supervision
As a supervisor, I value the tranformative space of postgraduate research. I prioritise the holistic experience of research candidates, understanding that HDR candidature is part of life, and that research questions and insights emerge from the histories, contexts and chanllenges faced by candidates. I encourage candidates to develop curiosity and diverse skills, and support interdisciplinary practice. Many of my supervisory experiences have been in cross disciplinary teams. I have mostly supervised practice-based research projects, across a range of media. I am highly involved in developing students’ academic writing skills and prefer to engage with writing throughout the candidature.
I want students to participate in networks that contribute to the discipline, university and arts ecologies, including publishing and exhibiting work during candidature. I support students in navigating systems and understanding the institutional contexts of research while empowering them to take ownership of their project. I encourage my students to recognise the possibilities that HDR training can open up for them.
I am currently unable to take on additional supervision. However, I am open to discussions about potential future projects, particularly in the areas of reimaging the past through site, archives and narrative; craft, mending and maintenance; regional arts and curatorial practice.
Current
3
Completed
11
Current
| Degree | Title | Commenced |
|---|---|---|
| PhD | Interdisciplinary Practices of Art-Science, in Particular the Field of BioArt/NewMedia and STEAM | 2018 |
| PhD | Dark Nation: Decolonising Australia's cultural memory | 2020 |
| PhD | Visions of house and home | 2023 |
Completed
| Degree | Title | Completed |
|---|---|---|
| PhD | Transitional Nostalgia: Mediating memory through objects of play Candidate: Ashley Douglas Bird | 2023 |
| PhD | A Surrounded Beauty: An investigation into how the photographic portrait can convey the atmosphere of islandness Candidate: Sarah Rhodes | 2023 |
| Masters | Strategies for Evoking the Sensation of Embodied Alterity: Space, mechanical movement, and soft sculpture Candidate: Olly Alexander Read | 2022 |
| Masters | Michael Chekhov's Embodied Imagination and the Haptic Sense Candidate: Josephine Anne Christensen | 2021 |
| PhD | Productive Limitation: Painting emergent, abstract languages through serial form Candidate: Antonia Elizabeth Sellbach | 2020 |
| Masters | The Bastard Performer: An exploration of the actor/performer experience in a postdramatic and posthuman intermedial contemporary theatre and performance ecology Candidate: Christopher Robert Jackson | 2019 |
| PhD | Porosity and Poiesis Across Fragile Membranes: Patterning fluid arrangements in human biology Candidate: Susan Quinn | 2019 |
| Masters | Affect and the Anthropocene: The art artefact and ecological grief Candidate: Catherine Faye Phillips | 2019 |
| PhD | On the Path of Untricking Hermes: Adaptation of the design philosophy and methods of permaculture in community engaged art projects Candidate: Tamas Oszvald | 2017 |
| Masters | Super Media World: An archaeology of convergence and exchange between physical and digital spaces Candidate: Jessica Florence Dorloff | 2017 |
| Masters | Between the Lines: The Reading and Re-Imagination of Landscape as Text Candidate: Patrick Raymond Sutczak | 2015 |