Dr Federica Mirra
Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, Dr Mirra is conducting her post-doctoral research, The City as Art: Living Aesthetics in Twenty-First-Century China, at Birmingham School of Art (SoA).
Her project focuses on what is often excluded from aesthetic experience: the everyday and collective practices in Chinese cities. Departing from a western-centric art historical approach, she analyses everyday practices - or 'living aesthetics' - to determine how ordinary urban experiences produce art and collective forms of agency. Dr Mirra will collect primary and secondary material through fieldwork in China, archival research in Hong Kong and Sydney, interviews, critical theory and philosophical investigation, and qualitative, empirical visual analysis.
Being awarded the AHRC-Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership, she obtained her PhD, Urban Imaginaries: Contemporary Art and Urban Transformations in Mainland China since 2001 at Birmingham SoA in 2022. Last year, Dr Mirra was Research Fellow at the Chair of Chinese Culture and Society, University of St Gallen, Switzerland and has been Research Associate at CCVA, BCU. Previously, she worked as Research Assistant and Curatorial Assistant in HE and the art sector.