Research at the department of art studies is conducted around the following clusters:

Modern and Contemporary Art

• Visual arts in relation to space (architecture, exhibition space, film, book, etc.)
  • Relationships between visual arts and architecture
  • Relationships between film and visual arts
• The visualization of architecture, city, and landscape in film and photography
• In relation to socio-political structures (galleries, the art landscape, exhibitions, etc.)
• Exhibition history
• Participatory art projects

19th-Century Art

• Intersections between art, gender, and space, both public and domestic, in the period ca. 1750–1950
• Historical interior

Early Modern Art (15th–18th century)

• Conservation, scientific imaging, restoration, materiality of the work
• Visual debates and visual culture
• Forgeries and connoisseurship
• Books, drawings, reproductions
• Landscape art; representation of plants/nature

Fashion

• Overlaps between fashion and architecture from the 18th century to today
• Belgian fashion before 1980
• Studies of material culture (18th–20th century); ‘object-based analysis’

Music

• Historical musicology (19th–20th century)
• Music education
• ‘Digital and augmented humanities’
• Music and well-being
• Theory of embodied music interaction
• Music interaction and technology

Performing Arts

• Corporeality; performativity
• Ecology; ecoperformances
• Theater, diversity, and inclusion
• Activism; resistance
• Theater history (early modern period; 19th–21st century)
• Intermediality; technology; media archaeology
• Dramaturgy; artistic research; ‘practice as research’