Elena Cologni

Elena Cologni is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Critical Practice at the Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University. She serves as the Cambridge School of Art Research Lead, PGR Coordinator, Panel 32 Art and Design REF 2021 and 2029 Convenor, School Research Ethics Panel Chair, and leads the Wellbeing, Care Aesthetics and Art Research and Education Unit (We CARE). She is also the ARU partnership Lead for the British Council Venice Biennale Fellowships Programme and the Art and Health Academic Lead for The Culture Capital Exchange Programme 2022-23.

Her educational background includes:

• BA in Fine Art from Accademia di Belle Arti Brera in Milan
• MA in Sculpture from Bretton Hall College, Leeds University
• PhD in Fine Art and Philosophy from University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design (2004)

Cologni develops dialogic and situated artistic strategies for observing, recording and stimulating awareness of everyday experiences. Her interdisciplinary approach intersects artistic research with environmental psychology, care ethics, philosophy, and gender studies, resulting in dialogic sculptures, public interventions, performance scores, and drawings. Her work explores place attachment, ecofeminism, spatialized art practices, and the relationship between art, wellbeing, and care aesthetics. She is particularly interested in how artistic practice can facilitate the sharing of insights and the location of situated knowledges within our relations with one another, place, and the environment, creating instruments to stimulate awareness of everyday experiences through relational, participatory and dialogic approaches.

Her publication portfolio reveals a consistent trajectory examining care ethics, dialogic practices, and the intersection of art with social and environmental concerns. She frequently investigates how artistic interventions can create spaces for dialogue about care, wellbeing, and our relationship to place and community, often bridging theoretical frameworks from feminist theory, environmental psychology, and performance studies with practical artistic applications that engage with public space, memory, and perception.

Her notable recognition includes:

• Seeds of Attachment - The Shape of the Public's Health award - first prize - Royal Society for Public Health in collaboration with the Royal Society of Sculptors (2019)
• Artist Bursaries from Artists Newsletter (2018)

Cologni supervises research students and has secured numerous research grants including the Practicing Feminist Care Aesthetics grant from The Getty Research Institute (2023/2025), Practices of care as ecofeminist and spatialized art funded by the Artist International Development Fund (Arts Council England and British Council 2018/19), and The Places of Memory commissioned by Universita' di Pisa (2022). She regularly collaborates with art galleries, museums, and the NHS Foundation Trust on educational activities and creative interventions that bridge art, health, and wellbeing.

She leads the Wellbeing, Care Aesthetics and Art Research and Education Unit (We CARE) and coordinates the ARU Arts, Health and Wellbeing Research Network. Her work often involves community collaborations, as seen in projects like The Places of Memory, which engaged with local communities in Pisa, and Seeds of Attachment, which explored parent-child bonds in relation to place attachment through nomadic dialogic sculptures inspired by Margaret Lowenfeld's Mosaic Test.