
Dr Catriona McAra
Postdoctoral Fellow, 2013-14
Dr Catriona McAra was a postdoctoral fellow at IASH 2013-14. Since then she has undertaken a curatorial career path within the senior management of university collections, and is now a Lecturer in Art History at the University of Aberdeen where she is working on her third monograph on Scottish women artists (contracted with Edinburgh University Press).
Memory Box
This project considered creative ageing in contemporary art with focus on the late practices of centenarian and nonagenarian surrealists, Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012), Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) and Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), as context. Key achievements included research for a first monograph, A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning's Chasm (Routledge, 2017), and co-curation with Dr Michael Eades (London School of Advanced Study) of recurring public engagement events 'Boxes of Delight: Surrealism at 90' and ‘Festival in a Box' held in IASH for Luminate: Scotland’s Creative Ageing Festival.
During her post-doc, Catriona also gave birth to her first son Soren Campbell. (Photo by Professor Karen Beckwith, Fulbright-Scotland Visiting Professor 2014).