Sea Changes: Charting the contemporary archaeology of North Sea energy through the eyes of women artists
How have women artists responded to past, present, and future marine energy transitions in the North Sea region?
Over the last five decades, the story of the North Sea region has been dominated by marine energy. The discovery of oil in the Brent and Piper Fields in the early 1970s transformed life both on and offshore for communities in NE Scotland and the Isles of Orkney and Shetland. Developments in marine renewable energy technologies from the early 1990s have continued to shape the economic, environmental and cultural story of the North Sea and its communities. Current conversations around a just transition, and debates over investment in offshore renewables versus continued exploitation of fossil fuels are keenly felt, as changing employment patterns and fluctuating investment have profound environmental, socio-cultural, and economic impacts.
Whether historical or current, these marine energy regimes (e.g. oil and gas; experimental tidal power; offshore wind), and their related infrastructure and devices have left a significant material and visual legacy. As industrial and contemporary archaeology, they form a significant and under-discussed aspect of North Sea heritage. They have also provided rich inspiration for many visual artists since the 1970s. Visual art plays a critical role in not only documenting the industrial contemporary archaeology of marine energy in the North Sea region, but can also reveal the contested, gendered, and unjust dimensions of past and present energy transitions, and provide springboards for interdisciplinary critical conversations around energy futures.
Both on- and offshore marine energy industries have tended to be male-dominated. Yet the artistic responses to these energies have been led by women artists; from Fay Gordon in the 1970s, to artists active today, including Kate Downie, Sue Jane Taylor, Miriam Sentler, Maja Zeƈo, Anne Bevan, and Mary Bourne, amongst others. Rather than treating this as a simple opposition between male-dominated industry and female artistic critique, the project will investigate how changing feminist politics since the 1970s—and gendered relations of labour, care, embodiment and environmental justice—have shaped artistic, curatorial, and contemporary archaeological engagements with marine energy.
Drawing on art history, contemporary archaeology, visual and material anthropology, and the environmental humanities, this PhD will examine the contemporary industrial archaeology of marine energy infrastructure and material culture through the lens of contemporary women artists. It will explore the role that visual art responses to marine energy regimes can make to interdisciplinary critical debates about energy in a region currently undergoing transition (Gormley et al 2025), and the ways in which contemporary art can contribute to understandings of contemporary and industrial archaeology (McAra 2025; Thomas et al 2018; Thomas 2024). It will also engage with established and emerging contemporary women artists who are working in the North Sea region today and whose work explores marine energy.
Applicants will be asked to articulate their own place-based project in response to this research topic, based on their own expertise and interests. Through research with artworks, archives, collections, exhibitions and contemporary artists, the project will examine not only what images represent, but how visual and material practices produce, circulate and contest knowledge about energy transitions. Potential researchers could choose, for example, to focus on the extractive legacies of North Sea oil; how art makes energy visible; the social and cultural legacies of oil; what ecocritical approaches in art history and the feminist justice movement offer to our understanding of marine energy transitions; or the role of visual culture in visualising speculative energy futures. Comparative perspectives that acknowledge the connections across the North Sea region are especially welcome.
The studentship benefits from NHT’s training programme developed by the partner institutions and international project partner, the University of Stavanger. Further information is available here.
Candidate Background
Applicants should have a strong first degree, and a relevant master’s degree, in Art History, Archaeology, Visual Culture, Environmental Humanities, Cultural Studies, Heritage Studies, Anthropology, or a related field.
A core aim of the NHT project is to work with local and regional partners, such as museums, galleries, archives, and other heritage organisations. Relevant source material is held by collections across the NHT region (e.g. The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney; Orkney Museums; Aberdeen Art Gallery; and Aberdeen Maritime Museum) and further afield. Applicants should identify key collections and organisations that relate to their project and should articulate how they will work with these in their research, and how their project will generate new knowledge in this area.
For further information please see:
This PhD is offered as part of the North-Sea Heritage in Transitions AHRC Doctoral focal award: AHRC North-Sea Heritage in Transitions | The School of Divinity, History, Philosophy & Art History | The University of Aberdeen
