TrAIN - Directory - TrAIN Core Members

Dr Michael Asbury

TrAIN Core Member - Senior Research Fellow

I was born in Teresopolis, in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro, the son of British missionaries. After twenty years in Brazil I came to England to study engineering but fortunately to myself (and others) changed course and went on to complete an MA in The Study of Contemporary Art at Liverpool University and a PhD in the History and Theory of Art at The London Institute (now UAL). The former focused on British art and architecture in the post-war era, while the latter took me back to Brazil through the work of Hélio Oiticica and his relation to the development of modernism in Brazil and elsewhere.
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Professor Oriana Baddeley

TrAIN Core Member - Deputy Director

I was born in Singapore and grew up in Europe and the UK, studying History and Theory of Art at the University of Essex. My doctoral subject formed the basis for work on the 1992 Hayward exhibition The Art of Ancient Mexico. I have written extensively on contemporary Latin American art, notably including Drawing the Line: Art and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Latin America (Verso 1989, co-author Valerie Fraser) and collaborated with inIVA and Gerardo Mosquera to produce Beyond the Fantastic: Art Criticism from Contemporary Latin America (inIVA/MIT 1996).
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Sutapa Biswas

TrAIN Core Member - Reader

I was born in India and educated in England where I have lived since the age of four. I undertook my BA in Fine Art at The University of Leeds (1981-1985), after which I completed my postgraduate study at the Slade School of Art (1988-1990), and at the Royal College of Art between (1996-1998). My work engages with issues of time, desire, feminism and cultural identity, and memory and, inspired by a strong interest in poetry, my practice-based research questions ideas of narrative structure in both the cinematic and drawn context.
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Professor Deborah Cherry

TrAIN Core Member - Associate Director

I studied in the UK (Edinburgh and London) and I have worked in the UK, the USA, and in Europe, where I am now at the University of Amsterdam. Following my PhD I have written extensively on art in Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth century with two books, Painting Women (1994) and Beyond the Frame: Feminism and Visual Culture (2000) along with exhibitions such as ‘The Edwardian Era’ (co-curated 1987). These projects, and other essays, have investigated how art and artistic practices and receptions were shaped by formations of gender, race and ethnicity, and relations of power.
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Dr Yuko Kikuchi

TrAIN Core Member - Reader

I was born in Tokyo and educated in Japan, the USA and UK. After completing a BA in English and American literature and an MA in American Studies, I worked at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, and during this period I began my research in craft and design history. A fascination with the local history of Sheffield, and its connection with John Ruskin and the English Arts & Crafts movement, gave rise to my interest in Ruskin’s influence in Japan. Ruskin in Japan 1890-1940: Nature for Art, Art for Life (1997) was my first major joint project, for which I curated an exhibition and produced a publication.
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Rebecca Salter

TrAIN Core Member - Research Fellow

I was born and educated in the UK and after studying for a BA in Three Dimensional Design at Bristol Polytechnic I spent two years as a research student at Kyoto City University of Arts, Japan. After leaving the university I lived in Japan for a further 4 years working in my studio and exhibiting while researching traditional crafts such as papermaking and Japanese woodblock. I was also taught woodblock by Professor Kurosaki Akira and I continue to research and teach the technique. I have published two books on the subject; Japanese Woodblock Printing (2001) and Japanese Popular Prints (2006).
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Julian Stair

TrAIN Core Member - Research Fellow

Julian Stair is a potter and writer, his doctoral research concerned the critical origins of English studio pottery, and in 2004 he received a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship to research the making of monumental work in a Staffordshire brick factory. He is one of four core members of TrAIN now working on the ARHC project Forgotten Japonisme.
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Carol Tulloch

TrAIN Core Member - Senior Research Fellow

I was born in England of Jamaican parents and originally trained as a fashion and textiles designer. I gained my Masters degree in the History of Design at the V&A/RCA, London. The combined elements of my personal and professional life have shaped my interest in studying dress and black identities as dialogues on the ‘self’. This has been debated through published articles such as ‘Out of Many, One People’?: The Relativity of Dress, Race and Ethnicity to Jamaica, 1880-1907 (1998), ‘“My Man, Let Me Pull Your Coat to Something: Malcolm X’ (2001), and ‘Strawberries and Cream: Dress, Migration and the Quintessence of Englishness’ (2002).
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Professor Toshio Watanabe

TrAIN Core Member - Director

I grew up in a transnational environment. My father is Japanese and my mother German from Transylvania in Romania. I was born in Bern, Switzerland, but grew up in Japan. I studied at the Universities of Sophia (in Tokyo), Tokyo, London (Courtauld Institute of Art) and Basel, where I completed my PhD. I first started to teach at the City of Birmingham Polytechnic, where I ran the MA in History of Art and Design. Then I came to Chelsea in 1986, initially as the Head of Art History, later becoming Head of Research and now the Director of the TrAIN Research Centre.
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Isobel Whitelegg

TrAIN Core Member - Research Officer

I completed my BA at Winchester School of Art, and went on to specialise in modern and contemporary Latin American Art in the Department of History & Theory at the University of Essex. While completing my PhD there, I was also involved in organising exhibitions as curatorial advisor to the University’s collection of Latin American art. My PhD thesis concerned the work of artist Mira Schendel, who was born in Switzerland, grew up in Italy and came to Brazil in 1949. I focused on her dialogues with writers, philosophers and other artists, a network that centred on the city of Sao Paulo but was extended as she travelled and exhibited internationally.
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