Lindsay holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London, an MA with Distinction in Cultural and Media Studies from the Open University, for which she was awarded the Pavis Prize, and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is a trained community arts practitioner and began her career as a drama facilitator and mental health support worker before joining the Open University.

Lindsay worked as an Associate Lecturer between 2003 and 2019 and joined the Art History department as a Staff Tutor in 2019. Since 2020 she has acted as Qualification Lead in Art History, with responsibility for supporting the development and review of the BA (Honours) in Art History and Visual Cultures (R27) and the MA in Art History (F33), and in 2024, she was appointed to the role of Deputy Director of Teaching (Tuition) in the School of Arts and Humanities.

Research

Lindsay is interested in materiality and mediality in contemporary art. She is currently developing a project on fragmentation that uses assemblage theory and new media theory perspectives to explore intersections between material objects and processes, art and visual cultures, and concepts relating to ecology, social justice, and mutuality. Her doctoral thesis investigated destruction, matter and mediality through a close engagement with the art event Break Down (Michael Landy, 2001), in which the artist's 7227 belongings were systematically catalogued, dismantled and granulated.

Between 2022 and 2024, Lindsay served as co-convenor of the Open Ecologies research group, which holds regular seminars bringing together colleagues from the Arts and Humanities, STEM, the Social Sciences and beyond to provide cross-disciplinary perspectives on ecology, nature, and climate crisis. She is also active in the Objects, Collections and Museums research group, which provides an interdisciplinary space to discuss material objects and practices and their critical reception, and Creative Interactions, which explores connections between creative practice and academic research.

Conference papers

June 2024: 'Contacting Nature Through Ekphrasis', Creative Interactions and Contemporary Challenges Conference, The Open University, London.

April 2023: 'Fragmenting', Objects, Collections and Museums Research Group, The Open University.

November 2022: 'Assemblages and Ecologies', Open Ecologies Research Group, The Open University.

June 2019: ‘The manual in Michael Landy’s Break Down’: Languages INTER Networks conference. Lancaster University.

September 2017: ‘Fragment / Part / Whole: Matter and Mediality in Michael Landy’s Break Down’. Waste: A Symposium. Birkbeck, University of London.

January 2017: 'Michael Landy’s Break Down: Trashing and Transforming’, TRASH conference, Department of English Studies, University of Vienna. Supported via a grant from the competitive Graduate School Fund at Goldsmiths, University of London.

October 2016: ‘Writing through the fragments: Ekphrastic encounters with Michael Landy’s Break Down’. Creative Humanities: Thinking, Making and Meaning. AHRC North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester. Supported via a full bursary from the Consortium.

Invited speaker

November 2022: Chair of Seminar, Ekphrasis, Creating a Space for Art and Literature, Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London.​​

January 2020: ‘Material, process, time: The fragment in Michael Landy’s Break Down’: Literary London Reading Group. University College London.

Public Engagement

September 2024: Contributed research and questions on ecology, communality and the university to a podcast interview conducted by Dr Urmila Mohan with the world-renowned anthropologist Professor Francis B. Nyamnjoh. 'Convivial Scholarship in an Incomplete World', Embodied Worlds Season 2, Episode 1, The Jugaad Project (transcript published via The Jugaad Project).

June 2023: Ekphrastic writing activity to promote close observation and ecological awareness at a land art site, for community members and approximately 85 local school pupils aged 13-15. Solstice Week. Crawick Multiverse, Sanquar, Dumfries and Galloway.

June 2022: Co-facilitated creative activity about endangered birds and their habitats for families and children (approximately 400 visitors), as part of the Art, Visual Culture, and the Global Climate Crisis project. ‘Wildlife: Creative Encounters with Urban Nature’, Glasgow Science Festival. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.

Teaching

Lindsay is a member of the Module Team for A236: Art and Visual Cultures in the Modern World, a second-level module that launched in October 2023, and authored two chapters (listed below) that explore art history and visual culture in innovative ways. The first, 'The Expansion of Vision', examines how scientific images and new visual technologies have transformed visual culture in modernity. The second, 'The Private Life of Images', explores the image and its ambiguous relationship to private and public life, through examples ranging from daguerreotype portraits to snapshots and the mobile phone camera.

As Qualification Lead in Art History, Lindsay supports the development of the BA (Hons) Art History and Visual Cultures, directing a cohesive teaching programme that fosters students’ development of relevant knowledge and skills through an expanded curriculum that encompasses Visual Cultures, Heritage and Museum Studies, and global and ecological perspectives across three entirely new Art History modules in addition to an existing module at levels 2 and 3. Her design and coordination of a programme of supra-curricular skills development via a suite of online teaching resources complements the new curriculum, enabling students to develop their analytic and visual skills throughout their studies.

In support of innovative and inclusive teaching at the Open University Lindsay regularly contributes to scholarship projects. In 2019-20 she sponsored a project lead by Dr Veronica Davies to investigate strategies for effective online 'gallery visits', and in 2019, she was lead researcher for the arts strand of a mixed methods, cross-School scholarship project to investigate the pedagogic implications of synchronous, online teaching within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences particularly in relation to issues of equalities and access.

Teaching publications

Crisp, L. P. (2023a) ‘The expansion of vision’, in Murray, A. (ed.), Visual cultures of modernity [Module text, A236], The Open University, pp. 43-74.

Crisp, L. P. (2023b) ‘The private life of images’, in Murray, A. (ed.), Visual cultures of modernity [Module text, A236], The Open University, pp. 111-44.