Gretchen Coombs
Gretchen Coombs is a Post Doctoral Fellow in the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT. She researches socially engaged art and design practices in the US, the UK and Australia, with a particular focus on how they are practiced in urban contexts.
Gretchen has a PhD in social and cultural anthropology and a MA in visual criticism: her writing uses a combination of ethnographic methods and visual analysis. Her co-edited book for Routledge, Undesign: Critical Practices at the Intersection of Art and Design is due out later this year. She is currently completing her monograph, The Lure of the Social: Encounters with Contemporary Artists (Intellect 2018), which is an experimental ethnography of artists working at the intersection of art, aesthetics, and politics.
Themes
Creativity, Learning, Digital Arts, and Design
Creativity, Learning, Digital Arts, and Design positions research participants as ‘creative agents’ and authors of their own experience.
Publications
(In Press) It’s (red) Hot Outside: The Aesthetics of Climate Change Activism in Extinction Rebellion
The Lure of the Social: Encounters with Contemporary Artists
The Lure of the Social is an intimate and personal exploration into the key individuals, institutions, and gatherings that make up the field of socially engaged art. In this book of...