Graduate stories

Some of our recent OU MA Art History students at their graduation ceremony held at the Barbican, London with department staff, Dr Carla Benzan, Dr Emma Barker and Professor Clare Taylor. Alongside former OU MA Art History student, Michael I. Ohajuru who also received his honorary doctorate from the OU in 2024.

Some of our graduates with Dr Clare Taylor and Dr Diana Newell at the Barbican in March 2017.

Students who complete our MA go on to pursue interesting careers in art history and related fields. Some of our students have been accepted into PhD programmes, receiving prestigious awards and funding for their doctoral studies, while others work in the education sector or for heritage institutions. Many students stay in contact after completing the MA, establishing important networks across the country and even the globe. Our alumni arrange informal museum and exhibition visits as well as networking events.

Below is a sample of some of the work our MA graduates have gone on to pursue

Katie Ault MA thesis was shortlisted for the ‘For Art History Dissertation Prize’, and she went on to receive CHASE funding for her PhD at The Open University on ‘Material on the move: fourteenth-century Italian paintings in nineteenth-century Britain’.

Isabel Alexander obtained her MA in Art History in 2019 and received an AHRC collaborative doctoral award for her PhD ‘Immersive Images: 1820-1920' at the University of Exeter in collaboration with the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. 

Mark Fearbunce obtained his MA in Art History in 2018. In Mark’s post as Course Leader for BA (Hons) Fine Art at University Centre, Somerset (UK) he continues to be involved with initiatives set by the department of Art History around the teaching of global art history.

Ann Gavaghan after completing the MA in Art History received a OOC Collaborative Doctorial Award with Transport for London for the thesis ‘London Underground’s Platform Art in the 1980s and 1990s: Post-modernism and Public Art’.

Dawn Kanter after completing her MA in Art History received funding from the Open-Oxford Consortium to undertake doctoral research at The Open University on British portraiture 1900-1950 through the experience of the portrait sitting. Her project was an interdisciplinary one between art history and digital humanities and was awarded in 2024. Dr Kanter is now Manager of the Digital Humanities Research Hub at the School of Advanced Study at the University London.

Carolyn Kerr after completing her MA in Art History received CHASE doctoral funding for her PhD at The Open University ‘Performance, Seduction, Subversion: The Masquerade as spectacle and image in Second Empire Paris (1848-1870)’. 

Allan Norris obtained his MA in Art History with Distinction. He received CHASE doctoral funding for his PhD at The Open University ‘On Figuration in the Work of Post-Conceptual British Women Painters’ and received his PhD in 2025.

Amanda Stevens after completing the MA in Art History received an AHRC collaborative doctoral award with the National Railway Museum and The Open University for her PhD research ‘Home on the Rails, the design, fitting and decoration of train interiors in Britain c1920-1955’ and obtained her PhD in 2022.