Two more research chairs in Fine Arts

By Frank Kuin

The Faculty of Fine Arts has announced two Concordia Research Chairs: Lynn Hughes, in Studio Arts, and Kristina Huneault, in Art History.

Concordia Research Chairs are funded by the university to encourage faculty members to remain at Concordia and continue to be productive in their respective areas of study.

Lynn Hughes develops collaborative, interactive works using adapted or custom wireless interfaces. She is currently working on a large-scale immersive play environment with a team of programmers, artists, artist/programmers, an interface designer, and an electronic-music composer.

She was one of the founders of Hexagram, the Montreal Inst-itute for Research / Creation in Media Arts and Technologies. She also served on the committee that lobbied for and planned the new pilot program to fund research and creation through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

As Concordia Research Chair, Kristina Huneault will complete her monograph on women’s art in Canada in the 19th century and pursue her research on feminist methodology in art history. Her approach bridges feminism and post-structuralism, psychoanalysis and social history.

She will establish a visual database of art by historical Canadian women, and create an archive of primary sources. She is also organizing a series of seminars over the next five years.

The first speaker in the series was Mieke Bal, founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Theory. Forthcoming seminars will be run by Anthea Callen, Ruth Phillips, David Peters Corbett and Michael Fried.

This brings to three the number of Concordia Research Chairs in Fine Arts, the other being Martin Lefebvre, in Film Studies.

According to the Office of Research website, there are now 11 Concordia Research Chairs in Arts and Science, 14 in Engineering and Computer Science, and two in the John Molson School of Business.