Fellow 2024/2025Stephen Barber
Stephen Barber is Professor in Art History and the Co-Director of the Visual and Material Culture Centre at Kingston University’s School of Art since 2012. Prior to this, he held research positions at such institutions as the California Institute of the Arts, the University of Tokyo, Tokyo Keio University, the IMEC Research Institute in Paris/Caen, Berlin Free University, Berlin University of the Arts, and Sussex University.
Stephen earned a PhD from Queen Mary College, University of London. His research has been funded by a wide range of research councils and foundations such as the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the German Ministry for Education and Research, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the Getty Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
The focus of Stephen’s research is on urban cultures and their intersection with art and moving-image forms. His current project explores the concept of the ‘apocalyptic urban wasteland.’ Among his many publications are notable works such as Berlin Bodies: Anatomising the Streets of the City (2017), Film's Ghosts: Tatsumi Hijikata and the Transmutation of 1960s Japan (2019), and The Projectionists: Eadweard Muybridge and the Future Projections of the Moving Image (2020). In 2023, he published A Sinister Assassin, a translation of Antonin Artaud’s final writings, following his earlier translation of Artaud’s letters from Ireland, titled Artaud 1937 Apocalypse (2018).
Stephen has presented his research at venues such as Tate Modern and Tate Britain in London, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Japan Society in New York, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, and the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio. His forthcoming research project at CAPAS will lead to the completion of a book to be published by the arts publisher Diaphanes.