Dr Amanda Crawley Jackson is Associate Dean for Knowledge Exchange at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Previously, she was Faculty Director of Knowledge Exchange & Impact (Arts and Humanities) and Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sheffield.
Amanda’s research focuses on the representation and understanding of space in literature, contemporary visual art and philosophy. She has published on contemporary art practice in France, Algeria and Morocco, as well as on French writers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Georges Perec. Her current research project is a monograph entitled Post-Traumatic Landscapes.
Frequently working in collaboration with artists, photographers and other practitioners, she has curated a number of exhibitions and written essays for artists’ books and catalogues. Her most recent exhibition was Invisible Wounds: Landscape and Memory in Photography, at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield (UK). In 2013-2016, she led the Furnace Park project in Sheffield, which hosted a series of exhibitions, concerts, outdoor cinema events, artists in residence, talks and workshops.
Working in partnership with forumZFD in Kosovo, she led on Landscapes of Repair, a project exploring practices of urban repair in the aftermath of trauma.
Amanda led the 2018 Railway Cultures project, in collaboration with the National Railway Museum in York; the Modern Natures cross-sector symposium with The Hepworth Wakefield; and From Brooklyn Works to Brooklynism with the Kelham Island Industrial Museum.
“Amanda Crawley Jackson […] is from the French Department at the University of Sheffield, whose occursus project was based in and around Furnace Park, a vacant lot in Netherthorpe, Sheffield. Crawley Jackson is determinedly not an artist or photographer, but uses photography as a tool for notation in her regular blogging; she has frequently worked in tandem with artists to investigate the city.”
(Joanne Lee, ‘Vaguely Northern: In Between In England”, in Chris Goldie and Darcy White [eds.], Northern Light: Landscape Photography and Evocations of the North, Columbia University Press/Transcript, 2017).
KEY CONFERENCE PAPERS AND CONFERENCE ORGANISATION
14 July 2021. Organised Landscapes of Repair conference (online). 90 international delegates. Keynote paper: ‘Approaching Landscapes of Repair’.
15-16 July 2020. Organised Post-Traumatic Landscapes conference (online). 180 international delegates. Keynote paper: ‘Post-Traumatic Landscapes’.
25-26 April, 2019. Organised Modern Natures symposium (at The Hepworth Wakefield). Keynote paper: ‘Furnace Park, creative practice and meanwhile places’.
March 2018: Organised Railway Cultures conference at the National Railway Museum; delivered keynote address on collaborative partnerships with museums.
28 April 2017. ‘ Furnace Park: A Case Study in Urban Plasticity?’, Journée d’études Patrimoine industriel et nouvelles générations, Université de Perpignan, France.
2-4 April, 2017. ‘Re-making the City? The recent work of activist collectives in France’, Francospheres of Resistance and Revolution conference, Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London.
11 January 2017. ‘Student reflexive learning journals: experiences from Contemporary Visual Arts in France’, University of Sheffield Learning and Teaching Conference.
6-7 May 2016. ‘Towards a Nissological Reading of Georges Perec’, Perec’s Geographies: An Interdisciplinary Symposium, University of Sheffield.
21 June 2012, ‘plastiCities: neuroplasticity, art and the city’, invited paper, Culture and Place: past, present and future symposium, Nottingham Trent University.
19 June 2012, ‘The Oblique: A Metric Function Between the Operation of Horizontality and the Vertical’, invited public talk at the Son Gallery, London.
15 June 2012, ‘Retour/Détour: Bruno Boudjelal and the Failure of Return’, University of Nottingham, Photography in Contemporary France conference.
24 May 2012, ‘plastiCities’. Public event chaired by Rt. Hon David Blunkett MPto launch plastiCities project. [a research paper?]
23 May 2012, ‘plastiCities’. Invited public talk at Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield.
31 March 2012, ‘Indisciplinarity: Art and Science crossovers’, and Chair of Dialogue Symposium, Annual conference of the Northern Arts and Science Network, PSL (Gallery).
15 November 2011, ‘The End of the Future? Ruins and Modernity in Contemporary Art from France’, invited research paper at the University of Durham.
8 June 2011, ‘Art and Politics’, Cornerhouse (International Centre for Contemporary Visual Arts and Independent Film), Manchester.
20-21 May 2011, ‘Ruins in contemporary art from France and Algeria’, Beyond the Global City conference, Centre for Creative Collaboration, Royal Holloway University of London.
15 May 2011, ‘Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers’, Secret Cinema, Old Vic Theatre, London.
8 April 2011, ‘The states and Stakes of Contemporary Art in Algeria’, Cornerhouse, (International Centre for Contemporary Visual Arts and Independent Film) Manchester.
27 July 2009, ‘What terminology for African Art?’ Conference at the Bibliothèque Nationale d’Alger, in the context of the Pan African Festival. Invited by the Algerian Ministry of Culture.
1 June 2009, ‘Awkwardness and collaborative research’. Keynote paper with Terry O’Connor (Forced Entertainment) at Site Gallery symposium on art, architecture and the built environment, in the context of Leverhulme Trust funded artist-in-residence programme.
24-26 July 2008, The French Connection: New Perspectives on French Contemporary Art across Disciplines (University of Cambridge, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Human), ‘Making and Unmaking the City: The work of Maud Haya Baviera’. Invited speaker and participant in roundtable discussion, ‘Recent initiatives in the promotion and display of French art’.
April 2008, Building Bridges in the City. UMBC, Baltimore (USA), ‘Articulating absence in the contemporary city’ (supported by British Academy Travel Award)
January 2008, Technologies of the Visual. University of Manchester (UK), ‘The Photographic Works of Maud Haya Baviera’
October 2008, University of Manchester Research Seminar Series, ‘Nothing is vaster than empty things’. Invited research paper.
January 2007, Centre for European Literatures and Cultures Research Seminar Programme, Manchester Metropolitan University (UK). ‘The Style of Engagement and the Engagement of Style’. Invited research paper.
November 2006, The Flesh in the Text. University of Kent at Canterbury (UK). ‘Impression and Inscription. Derma-graphics in the photographic works of Natacha Lesueur’.
October 2006. Space, Place and Landscape: Women and Environments in Contemporary French Culture. Conference of the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, UCL (UK). ‘Walls have feelings too. Creative (mis) uses of the carceral space in the work of Albertine Sarrazin’. With Carolyn Butterworth. (PI)
October 2006, Literature Matters. Conference of the American Institute of Romance Studies, Eugene, Oregon (USA). ‘The Style of Engagement and the Engagement of Style: Sartre’s committed literature’.
December 2005, Sartre Centennial Celebration, University of California at Santa Barbara (USA). ‘Heroic Ethics in Sartre’s Morts sans sépulture’.
July 2004, Nausea 2004. University of Newcastle (Australia). ‘La nausée des fins de voyage? Nausea and the end of travel’.
April 2004, Lesbian Inscriptions. University of Sheffield (UK). ‘Outings on the inside: lesbian presences in French prison narratives’.
June 1999, 40th Annual Conference of the Society for French Studies. University of Edinburgh (UK). ‘Grammatical Fictions: Reading and Writing the Self in Prison’.
July 1997. Representing Lives, Nottingham Trent University (UK). ‘Albertine Sarrazin: Writing the Self in Prison’.
occursus 