Terra Foundation Visiting Professor of American Art

The Terra Foundation Visiting Professorship is associated with the University’s Department of History of Art and generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Through this collaboration, the study of American art is promoted from a global perspective in Worcester, at the University of Oxford, and beyond. Each Visiting Professor engages in advanced research in the visual arts of the United States, delivers a series of public lectures in Trinity Term, and organises symposia that encourage international research collaboration. They also offer courses to undergraduate and graduate students at the University, often leading a module in their area of expertise on the MSt History of Art programme.

The Terra Foundation for American Art fosters intercultural dialogues and encourages transformative practices to expand narratives of American art. The Foundation’s grant programme, art collection, and initiatives support visual art projects engaged in reshaping how stories of American art are told.

Professor Erin Pauwels

Terra Foundation Visiting Professor 2024-25

Erin Pauwels, Associate Professor of American Art at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, specialises in the history of photography, media theory and ecocriticism, with a particular interest in the intersections between theatre and the visual arts. She received her PhD in Art History and American Studies from Indiana University and previously taught at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

While at Oxford, Professor Pauwels will work on a new monograph that explores the social architecture of photography by considering how studio portraits of Native American subjects were staged and circulated during the 19th and early 20th century.  She will also teach an undergraduate survey course on American art since the 17th century, as well as a Master’s course on art and environmental thought that focuses on how land, animals and material resources have inspired the art and, more broadly, the visual and material culture of the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.