This event brings together artist Mahtab Hussain and academic Maddie Hewitson, who will offer talks on how their work responds to the art of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Maddie Hewitson is Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Art History, Curating, and Visual Studies at the University of Birmingham. She is an art historian who specialises in nineteenth-century British art. Her research focuses on the visual and material cultures that emerged from British encounters with the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-to-late Victorian period. Her Leverhulme fellowship project, titled The First Covenant: understanding the role of the Hebrew Bible in Victorian art offers the first sustained analysis of the role the Old Testament played in British visual culture.

Mahtab Hussain is an artist who explores the important relationship between identity, heritage and displacement. His themes develop through long-term research articulating a visual language that challenges the prevailing concepts of multiculturalism. He has been recipient of numerous awards and commissions and exhibitions including, Hayward Gallery, Autograph ABP, New Art Exchange, Arts Council England, Arts Humanities Research Council; he has also been winner of the Curators Choice Award, Culture Cloud at New Art Exchange and of Format 13 Portfolio Review Award for most significant review and The Discoveries Award at FotoFest in Houston, Texas. In 2025, he will have a solo show at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham titled What Did You Want To See, exploring the fine line between photographic documentation and surveillance culture.

Our Research Seminar series is programmed by the Art History, Curating, and Visual Studies department, open to all. Please note our Lecture Theatre can get very warm, so please do use our free cloakroom to hang coats and jackets before taking a seat.

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