Vanessa Corby learnt she could paint, think, and write while undertaking her undergraduate degree in Fine Art in the North of England. The first in her family to go to University, she holds a PhD in feminism and art history (2002, Leeds) and joined York St John University as Lecturer in Contextual Studies in 2006. She is now the Professor of the history, theory, and practice of art at YSJU. Her research is the product of a fascination with artistic processes and materials that transform artistic protocols, culture, history, and society. Her attention to the historical specificity of art making is marked by a desire to read for the way in which artworks negotiate experiences that have been marginalised and/or silenced by dominant ideologies. As a result, her research has considered the felt experience and theoretical questions posed by ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and social class within the contexts of cultural memory, displacement, education, migration, trauma, and neoliberalism.