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Dr Ros Gray

Staff details

Dr Ros Gray

Position

Reader in Fine Art, Critical Studies

Department

Art

Email

r.gray (@gold.ac.uk)

Ros's engagement with art, ecology and climate justice involves collaborations with artists, scientists and activists.

Ros is Reader in Fine Art, Critical Studies and Programme Director of the MA Art & Ecology. Her research and teaching often involves collaborations with artists, scientists and activists, addressing ecological emergency with an emphasis on climate justice. Coming to ecology from a background researching militant filmmaking, she is interested in decolonial, eco-feminist and queer approaches to ecological stewardship.

Ros is on the Editorial Board of Third Text and is co-commissioning editor of the Goldsmiths Press book series Planetarities. She has organised numerous international conferences and film screening programmes, public engagement relating to soil care and climate change, and she was commissioned to make the podcast ‘The Coloniality of Planting’ by Camden Art Centre for the series Botanical Minds. Ros has coordinated the Goldsmiths Allotment since 2016 and she is currently leading the development of the Art Research Garden and Laboratory.

Academic qualifications

  • Doctorate (PhD), Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London 2007
  • MA Cultural Studies with Distinction, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London 2001
  • MA English Language and Literature, St Anne's College, University of Oxford 1994

Teaching and supervision

I am currently supervising the following doctoral students:

Morag Colquhoun, Department of Art, Goldsmiths
Gerard Ortin, Department of Art, Goldsmiths (Berlin Biennale, 2022)
Borbala Soos, Department of Art, Goldsmiths
Marie-Alix Isdahl, Department of Art, Goldsmiths
Sophie Williamson, Department of Art, Goldsmiths

Research interests

Ros’s research focuses on art, ecology and planetarity, particularly artistic approaches to environmental crisis involving soil care, cultivation and rewilding, with a focus on eco-feminist, climate justice, queer and crip approaches. She is currently developing a new research project, with the working title Arts of Planetary Rewilding.

Recent publications include essays in Anthony Downley (ed), Palestine Is Not a Garden (forthcoming), Edward Chell, Transports of Delight (forthcoming), Carl Gent, Felon Herb (Kelder, 2021), and Elin Wagner and Elisabeth Tamm, Peace with the Earth (2021).In 2021-2022 she was Principal Investigator on the Natural Environment Research Council Creative Climate Partnership Sensing Soil, which initiated the first artist residency in the Art Research Garden at Goldsmiths. In 2020 she was commissioned with Dr Shela Sheikh by Camden Art Centre to produce the podcast The Coloniality of Planting, as part of their Botanical Minds. This built on previous writing and research that examined the legacies and contemporary impacts of economic botany and colonial planting regimes, particularly the Third Text special issue The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions that she co-edited in 2018. Ros’s approach to ecology is grounded in her research background.

For more than fifteen years, she researched militant filmmaking networks dedicated to anti-colonial revolution and decolonisation, which after numerous articles, book chapters and curation of film programmes and public events culminated in her monograph Cinemas of the Mozambican Revolution: Anti-colonialism, Independence and Internationalism in Filmmaking, 1968-1991 (James Currey, 2020). Ros has published a pamphlet of poetry titled Comma (Earthbound Press, 2021), which addresses themes of chronic illness, expanding and contracting lifespans and more-than-human ecological relation.

Grants and awards

2022: 'Sensing Soil' Creative Climate Collaboration: COP 26 Environmental Science Public Engagement
Sensing Soil Creative Climate Collaboration established a partnership between Dr Ros Gray, soil scientist Dr Jacqueline Hannam, artist Harun Morrison and Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network.

Publications and research outputs

Book

Gray, Ros. 2020. Cinemas of the Mozambican Revolution: Anti-Colonialism, Independence and Internationalism in Filmmaking, 1968-1991. Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 9781847012371

Book Section

Gray, Ros. 2024. The Art of Planetary Rewilding. In: Anthony Downey, ed. Nida Sinnokrot: Palestine Is Not a Garden. Berlin: Sternberg Press. ISBN 9783956796302

Gray, Ros. 2023. Reclaiming the Commons: Re-enchanting the Commons. In: Alona Pardo, ed. RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology. Munich/London: Prestel Verlag in association with Barbican Art Gallery, pp. 249-280. ISBN 9783791379722

Gray, Ros. 2022. Everyone on deck! In: Edward Chell, ed. Transports of Delight. ISBN 9781739186104

Article

Gray, Ros and Sheikh, Shela. 2021. The coloniality of planting: legacies of racism and slavery in the practice of botany. The Architectural Review(1478), ISSN 0003-861X

Sheikh, Shela and Gray, Ros. 2018. La terre damnée: conflits botaniques et interventions artistiques. Le journal des laboratoires (Cahier C), pp. 3-6.

Gray, Ros and Sheikh, Shela. 2018. Editor's Introduction: The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions. Third Text, 32(2-3), pp. 163-175. ISSN 0952-8822

Audio

Sheikh, Shela and Gray, Ros. 2020. The Coloniality of Planting.

Conference or Workshop Item

Gray, Ros. 2014. 'The Socialist Friendships of Mozambican Cinema'. In: Red Africa. Calvert 22, United Kingdom.

Gray, Ros. 2014. 'O Anticolonialsimo da Imagen Militante in the Próximo Futuro series Novos Poderes'. In: A arte do comum e a produção da cultura: O Anticolonialismo da Imagem Militante à Guerra das Escritas. Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal.

Gray, Ros. 2012. 'The Militant Image - A Ciné Geography lecture'. In: Cinematic Migrations lecture series, MIT programme in Art, Culture and Technology. MIT, United States.

Edited Journal

Gray, Ros and Sheikh, Shela, eds. 2018. The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions, Third Text, 32(2-3). 0952-8822

Eshun, Kodwo and Gray, Ros, eds. 2011. The Militant Image: A Ciné-Geography, Third Text, 25(1). 0952-8822

Thesis

Gray, Rosalind Laura. 2008. Ambitions of Cinema: Revolution, Event, Screen. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London

Conferences and talks

2023: ALA lecture series: Ros Gray and Boukary Sawadogo

2021: Public Art and Environment, Public Art Now conference, Dublin Technical University

2021: Cinemas of the Mozambican Revolution, CAS seminar series, University of Edinburgh

2020: Cinemas of the Mozambican Revolution, Cinema & Revolution Conference, Escola das Artes, Universidade Catolica, Porto