After an Art PhD: Organising Towards New Intimacies
With Emeri Curd and Cléo Verstrepen
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Tuesday 14 April 2026, 18:00-20:00
Exhibition Research Lab, John Lennon Art and Design Building L3 5RD (map)
Free and open to all
Booking preferred, via Eventbrite
Join Emeri Curd and Cléo Verstrepen in the final event in a series of four, each exploring the work of two art research practitioners with related interests who have completed doctoral study in recent years, to examine the possibilities and challenges of practice after an art PhD.
Emeri Curd will discuss the intersection of institutional, community and grassroots/DIY settings and the complexities of this practice. They will use examples across the last ten years of practice – before, during and after their PhD – including conversations about action research, grassroots organising, institutional critique, care/co-option, solidarity, failure and queerness. Emeri is interested in what exists in grey areas; how and why socially engaged and activist practices leak and spill; and how the messiness of this work challenges infrastructure within institutions. Their work is increasingly DIY and seeks to agitate popular practices of ‘care’ and the ethical dimensions of institutional practice.
Cléo Verstrepen’s presentation will explore how doctoral research can serve as a foundation for ongoing curatorial and artistic experimentation rather than a purely academic endpoint. Drawing on their experience across independent curating, collective practice and institutional research, they will discuss how to navigate the balance between theoretical inquiry, creative work and financial sustainability. They will argue that academic frameworks can both stabilise and nourish experimental practice, allowing theory and practice to continuously inform one another.
The event will begin with a short grounding exercise. Refreshments will be available from 20 minutes before the start time. Emeri Curd will attend in person; Cléo Verstrepen will attend online. The event is hosted by Jonathan Hoskins, Associate Researcher at the Exhibition Research Lab and organiser of this series.
Find more here about the whole series ‘After an Art PhD: Creative Uses of a Creative Work’.
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Speaker biographies
Dr Emeri Curd is an artist, zine-maker, producer, and researcher. They develop projects that bring people together through socially engaged practice grounded in critical theory and community care, incorporating DIY and activist methods such as collage, printmaking, book- and zine-making, storytelling and public interventions. They work at the intersection of action research and arts-based practices. Emeri holds a practice-based PhD from Liverpool John Moores University titled ‘The People’s Glossary’ (2015-20). They continue to work within and outside institutions such as University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University, Tate Liverpool, and community organisations such as Asylum Link Merseyside, Heart of Glass and Homotopia. Emeri is currently working on an emerging project called the Trans* Info Shop, a mobile infoshop featuring a zine library and resource centre. The goal of the Trans* Info Shop is to create a publishing house specialising in the work of trans* and queer artists.
Dr Cléo Verstrepen is an independent curator and holds a PhD in art from the Tokyo University of the Arts, based between Marseille and Tokyo. Their approach to research is creative and integrative, spreading outside the academic field through curating, writing and performance. Their work explores forms of collaboration, hospitality and sensitive, situated modes of artistic production, paying particular attention to relational and community-embedded practices. Between 2022 and 2025, they were a founding member of the collective project space Datsuijo in Tokyo, and since 2025 have been developing Seisokuchi, an artist-in-residence platform.
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Images (left to right): Emeri Curd (image: Carl Davies); Cléo Verstrepen.