Dr Andrew Murray

Professional biography

Andrew joined the History of Art department at the Open University in 2019. He has been an associate lecturer at the OU since 2017 and has also taught at Royal Holloway (University of London) and the University of Buckingham. Previously he was a Stipendiat at the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte in Paris (2015-2016) and a PhD student at University College London (2011-2015). 

BA History of Art (University College London), MSt History of Art (University of Oxford), PhD History of Art (University College London).

Research interests

I specialise in the art and ceremony of late medieval France and Valois Burgundy (c. 1350-1520). I research how authority – cultural, legal and political – is manifested in visual culture, and I pay particular attention to the representation and performance of emotions and virtues. The historical aspect of this research has investigated the rhetoric of the common good and justice and how such rhetoric is evident in tomb sculpture, funerary ritual, ducal ordinances and courtly literature. My sociological research is in the history of emotions, and particularly the work of Johan Huizinga. 

More recently I have been writing about digital painting and visual culture, including analyses of the work of Simon Stålenhag as well as the concept of Spectacle. 

Teaching interests

I have written about modern and contemporary art and visual culture for A236 Art and Visual Cultures in the Modern World, and have edited the second book for this module, VIsual Cultures of Modernity (2023).  

I am currently writing about medieval and early modern art for the forthcoming module A237 Art and Life Before 1800.

External collaborations

I am a convener of the seminar series Marxism in Culture, which is hosted at the Institute of Advanced Studies at UCL.

I am an editor of the journal Medieval Low Countries.