Dr Miriam Hancill is an Edinburgh-based artist, researcher, and AFHEA-accredited educator, specialising in printmaking, installation, material-led practices, and practice-based research.
Miriam's doctoral project, Obdurate matter? Unfolding potential within materials, apparatuses, and procedures of printmaking through speculative practice (2026) employs material interrogation as a means of exploring how print's media and processes shape both approaches to and outputs of practice. Grounded in Deleuzian and new materialist theory, as well as key recent discourse in anthropology, art theory, material culture, and philosophy, her research considers how these core technical, practical elements of printmaking can also influence the perception and future situation of the discipline within the wider contemporary arts.
This research was guided by Miriam's practice as a visual artist, which employs material and process-led approaches to explore themes of labour, material awkwardness, and procedural uncertainty in the context of contemporary printmaking. Evolving over thirteen years of experience, Miriam's work brings together a number of artistic methods and matter, ranging from image-based and abstract prints, 3D sculptural components and installation strategies, to textiles, photographic imagery, and creative writing. In combining this assemblage of outputs, her practice attends to the generative sensations of printmaking – drawing out new potentials from encounters with traditional media and methods. Beyond print, new materialist sensibilities in Miriam's practice situate it as a means of reflecting upon material interplay and assumed ways of thinking and being in broader contemporary life.
Miriam has presented her work nationally and internationally, with selected recent outputs including Unfolding peripheral acts (article, IMPACT International Printmaking Journal, 2026); Obdurate matter? (conference presentation, CAA 114th Annual Conference, Chicago, USA., 2026); a tarlatan net (solo exhibition, Mote102 Edinburgh, 2025); PhD Showcase (group exhibition, University of Edinburgh, 2023-2025); Awkward matter?(Conference presentation, University of Angers, France, 2025); and DCA Print Studio X Jerwood residency (Dundee, 2025).
In addition to a PhD in Art practice, Miriam holds an MFA in Contemporary Art Practice from Edinburgh College of Art (2020) and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Newcastle University (2015). Since 2022 she has worked as a Tutor in the schools of Art, Architecture, and Landscape Architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art.