Biographies of Speakers:
Professor Michael JK Walsh
Professor Michael JK Walsh is a regarded academic in the field of English Modernism and the
development of intellectual thought before and during the First World War. He has recently
arrived at the School of Art, Design and Media, in Nanyang Technological University, having
been employed at Eastern Mediterranean University (Famagusta, Cyprus) for nine years. In
that time he successfully nominated Famagusta for inclusion in the World Monuments Fund
Watch List, brought the Global Heritage Fund to the same city, and in 2010 acted as team
coordinator for the United Nations project ‘Cultural Heritage Data Collection in the
northern part of Cyprus’. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in recognition
of his efforts to safeguard endangered Cypriot heritage. Michael co-edited Medieval
Famagusta: Studies in Art, Architecture and History published by Ashgate in 2012, and later that
year hosted a conference on Famagusta in Budapest. He is the most recent biographer of
CRW Nevinson, publishing Hanging a Rebel: The Life of CRW Nevinson in 2008 with
Lutterworth Press.
Selected Publications:
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‘The Melodrama of Memory and Mourning’ (British Art Journal, January 2006)
A Dilemma of English Modernism (University of Delaware Press, 2007)
Avant Garde and Avant Guerre: London, Modernism and 1914. (Cambridge University
Press, 2010)
Richard Slocombe
Richard Slocombe is Senior Curator of Art at the Imperial War Museum, having worked
there as a curator since 2004. He is IWM's specialist on British First World War art and
wartime poster propaganda and has researched, written and lectured widely on both
subjects. Richard is the curator of ‘Truth and Memory’, the largest retrospective exhibition
of British First World War art for almost a century. He has also curated shows on the
historic display of art by the IWM and the limits of artistic freedom in conflict, centred on
CRW Nevinson's painting 'Paths of Glory'. In 2007, Richard also to co-curated the acclaimed
exhibition 'War Posters: Weapons of Mass Communication' at IWM London. The exhibition
led to the publication of his 2009 book, 'British Posters of the Second World War'.
Richard’s work with the IWM poster collection has often involved collaboration with
Manchester Metropolitan University; he currently co-supervises an AHRC-funded
Collaborative Doctoral Award studentship researching IWM’s historic ‘War Publicity’
collection, of which the poster collection originally formed a part.
Richard also plays an active role in IWM's art acquisition programme and has been
instrumental in securing important works by Peter Kennard, Colin Self, Shanti Panchal and
John Minton.
Dr Sue Malvern
Dr Sue Malvern is co-convenor of the University of Reading’s MA programme in the History
of Art & Architecture. Her research interests include art and war in the 20th and 21st
centuries, sculptural monuments and memorials and contemporary art. Dr Malvern is also a
member of the War, Gender and Visual Culture Network, which aims to disseminate new
research on war and visual culture and to promote collaborative work through symposia,
projects and publications and co-convened the AHRC-funded network Terrorist
Transgressions in partnership with Birbeck College and the Royal Military Academy
Sandhurst. Dr Malvern supervises doctoral candidates researching images of peace in the
20th century, dress history in World War Two Britain and visual cultures of the British far
right 1923-1945.
Selected Publications:
 Modern Art, Britain and the Great War: Witnessing, Testimony and Remembrance (Yale
University Press, 2004)
 ‘War Tourisms: “Englishness”, art and the First World War’ (Oxford Art Journal,
2001)
Christopher Martin
Christopher Martin is a former University of Plymouth art librarian. He is currently
cataloguing the paintings of CRW Nevinson, and is also particularly interested in the work
of Wyndham Lewis, David Bomberg and William Roberts. His paper, ‘Nevinson and Fiction:
A Survey’ was included in the Nevinson anthology, A Dilemma of English Modernism, also
edited by Professor Michael JK Walsh. Christopher is also a published poet who has
collaborated with visual artists. He has also been published in journals such as Poetry, Rare
Book Review and Journal of British Cinema and Television.
Dr Richenda Roberts
Dr Richenda Roberts was awarded her PhD by the University of Birmingham where she
currently teaches for the Department of Art History, Film and Visual Studies. With teaching
and research experience in curatorial practices alongside British art and design from 18401940, she has particular interest and specialism in evaluating the outcomes of exhibition
display strategies, pacifist art practices, art responding to the First World War, utopian art
communities of the 1930s, Art Deco and Modernist design produced in Britain during the
inter-war period. In addition to teaching and giving regular public lectures, Richenda has also
recently undertaken work as a curator and adviser for two exhibitions commemorating the
centenary of the First World War - Rebel Visions: The War Art of CRW Nevinson, Barber
Institute of Fine Arts, the University of Birmingham, and the forthcoming S.O.S.: Evelyn De
Morgan’s War Art to be held at Blackwell House, Bowness, in the spring and summer of
2015.
Dr Jonathan Black
Dr Jonathan Black read History with History of Art at Cambridge University. In 1997, Dr
Black obtained his Masters in History of Art, focusing on the English Futurism of CRW
Nevinson (1913-1916) and by 2003, had obtained his PhD in History of Art from University
College, London, studying the image of the British soldier, or ‘Tommy’, in the First World
War Art of CRW Nevinson, Eric Kennington and Charles Sargeant Jagger (1915-1925). In
September 2010, Dr Black was awarded as three year AHRC Early Career Fellowship to
research the life and work of Anglo-Welsh sculptor Ivor Roberts-Jones (1913-1996). In
2011, Dr Black published the monograph, The Face of Courage: Eric Kennington, Portraiture and
the Second World War, coinciding with an exhibition of the same name. Dr Black has a keen
interest in the social, political and military history of the First World War. In August 2013,
he was appointed as one of 20 ‘expert advisers’ by the AHRC to the AHRC/BBC project
‘The First World War at Home’. He has been invited to give papers on the image of nonwhite soldiers fighting for the British in British Official First World War Art at the
conferences, ‘The British Empire and the First World War’ at Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore and ‘Not All Quiet on the Ottoman Fronts: Neglected Perspectives on
a Global War’ at Bilgi University, Istanbul.
In continuation of his PhD research into British Art and the First World War, he
published the first book to focus on the prints of CRW Nevinson (1889-1946), A Splendid
Sense of Design: The Complete Prints of CRW Nevinson. The publication of this book coincided
with the exhibition CRW Nevinson: A Printmaker in Peace and War which Dr Black guest
curated at the Osborne Samuel Gallery in 2014.