Spotlight on Alumni | Kate Antosik-Parsons

Dr Kate Antosik-Parsons, PhD 2012.

Tell us about your time at UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy?

After I completed an MA in Women’s Studies at UCD (2005-2006), writing my dissertation on Orla Barry’s moving image work Portable Stones (2005), I continued pursuing my interests in art and gender by undertaking a PhD in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy. Not only did the school have a great reputation, but I found it very welcoming, therefore it seemed like a natural progression for me. I wrote my PhD on gender and memory in Irish time-based art and I was a scholar in the Graduate Education and Research Programme in Gender, Culture and Identity (2009-2012). I made many important connections with researchers at UCD and further afield, particularly through participation at conferences and seminars in Ireland and abroad. I was also fortunate to have lecturing and tutoring opportunities in Art History, Women’s Studies and Irish Studies which enabled me to feel connected to different schools within the University.

In 2009, while presenting my PhD research at the Association for Art History in the UK, I met Megan Johnston, the director at the Millennium Court Arts Centre in Portadown, who had commissioned the Guerrilla Girls for a project on Ireland. This led to an amazing opportunity to work with Megan and others to conduct primary research for the artists that formed the basis for the commission. A memorable experience was working with Prof Kathleen James Chakraborty to bring the Guerrilla Girls to UCD for a panel discussion, which I chaired. As I remember it, we had a packed lecture hall and a very lively discussion. 

What did you do after you left UCD?

After my PhD, I was a stay at home mother to my four young children while taking on short-term lecturing opportunities in Ireland and the USA, and publishing my research. I mention this because it has shaped how I have navigated academia and motherhood after my doctorate. In 2017-2018, I was a community organiser for Dublin Bay North Repeal the 8th, contributing to a long-overdue change for abortion access in Irish society. Afterwards, I helped form the DBN research group and we collaboratively conducted research on first time activists and feminist pedagogy, co-authoring two articles.

From 2019-2020, I was the L’Internationale Researcher for NCAD’s contribution to ‘Our Many Europes’, a project about art in the 1990s. L’Internationale is a European museum confederation of seven major art institutions interrogating art within local, international and global contexts. I mapped Irish performance art practices through archival and primary research. The eleven oral histories I collected with artists like Pauline Cummins, Alanna O’Kelly, Danny McCarthy, Brian Connelly and Sandra Johnston offer valuable insights into Irish performance art. These are available for consultation in the National Irish Visual Arts Library at NCAD. This formed the basis for Aftereffects and Untold Histories, Politics and Spaces of Performance since the 1990s (NCAD, 2021).

Recently, I have written exhibition essays about the work of Pauline Cummins and Frances Mezzetti, Sharon Kelly and Jennifer Trouton. Pursing my interest in the maternal, I collaborated with artist El Putnam on the live performance Mutualism (2019), and exhibited my short film This Land is Your Land (2019). I collaborated with Amanda Coogan for piece of performative writing for They Come Then, The Birds (2021), a commission for the Magdalene Series at Rua Red. I was the rapporteur for Rua Red’s performance art festival ‘Uprooting Tallaght’ (August 2023), acting as a durational witness to over 15 hours of performance in 4 days, reporting to the festival’s panel discussion.

What is the relationship between the study and research you engaged in at the School of Art History and Cultural Policy?

The relationship between my PhD research and my current work developed in a very organic sort of way. In my current role I am a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin in Social Studies on the Reproductive Citizenship Project, an HEA North-South programme funded study that examines how the different legislative pathways to the legalisation of abortion on the island of Ireland shape people’s sense of belonging. I am working collaboratively with a team of researchers at TCD and University of Ulster employing transdisciplinary methodologies from the social sciences and humanities. Prior to this I was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of Social Work and Social Policy with Dr Catherine Conlon on HSE commissioned Unplanned Pregnancy and Abortion Care Study (2021), a qualitative study on experiences of abortion care after the service was implemented in 2019. The resulting report, on which I am a co-author, has formed the service user strand of the government review of legislation. It is exciting to see the impact of my research and how my long-standing interests in gender and sexuality in Ireland have translated into sexual and reproductive health and social policy. Practically, my PhD prepared me for the project
management aspects of both projects. The expertise that I developed during my PhD around the political and socio-cultural aspects from which Irish art engaged with over the span of my study time period (1972-2010) continues to provide me with a solid base which I draw upon frequently in my present work. Furthermore, on a conceptual level, I see a direct linkage between my work on performance and time-based art and embodiment in terms of an ongoing exploration about how bodies produce knowledge.

If you could offer one piece of advice to current students what would it be?

Be open to embracing possibilities and new avenues – you never know where an interest might lead to an exciting opportunity.