Kristen Kreider

Kristen Kreider is Professor of Fine Art and Director of the Doctoral Programme at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Previously, she held professorships at Goldsmiths and the University of Oxford where she led the Ruskin School of Art. Working collaboratively with architect James O'Leary as Kreider + O'Leary, she creates performance, installation and time-based media work in relation to sites of cultural interest and political significance.

Her research stems from an interest in the poetics of thought, its materialization as form, and how artworks relate to the world, resulting in both academic writing and practice-led research. Kreider + O'Leary's work combines performance, installation, documentary, poetry, fiction and image-making to expose and interweave the complexities of place. Their recent major project, Ungovernable Spaces: Community Formation and the Poetics of Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2025), explores four global cases where communities formed amidst social and political turbulence.

Their artistic output demonstrates consistent engagement with politically charged environments including the Mecca apartment building in Chicago, Gandhi's Salt March, Chile's Ciudad Abierta, and Belfast's 'peace walls.' Their work has been exhibited at Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, Royal Academy, Lisbon Architecture Triennale, and Istanbul Biennial.

• Key Publications: Ungovernable Spaces (2025), Field Poetics (2018), Falling (2015), Poetics and Place (2014)
• Key Projects: Interface Architecture, Sabarmati Vector, Cifra, Edge City, Light Vessel Automatic

As an educator, Kreider has directed doctoral programs at multiple institutions and promotes rigorous dialogue between creative and critical practice. She supports artistic research that is both personal and political, emphasizing the material 'stuff' of art alongside its speculative possibilities. Her supervision particularly welcomes proposals engaging with situated research methodologies to explore pressing contemporary issues.