Gregory, Davinia (dlg2173)

Dr. Davinia Gregory is an interdisciplinary writer, researcher and educator and artist from the UK with BA in Illustration (University of Westminster, 2006), an MA in History of Design (Royal College of Art, 2010) and a PhD in Sociology and Cultural Policy Studies (University of Warwick, 2020). Her appointment as Assistant Professor in Arts Administration at Teachers College Columbia University synthesizes her teaching, museum education work and research that have been rooted in material culture studies, Caribbean studies, the sociology of Race, diaspora studies, and cultural policy studies. Her teaching on the Arts Administration Program focuses on providing a truly global perspective. Her courses encourage students to make critical connections between their professional practices and an increasingly complex socio-political reality. This is done through interactive, workshop-style teaching and assessment that challenges the hierarchies and inequalities that the arts can either serve to sustain or disrupt.

Gregory publishes across edited volumes and journals in Sociology, material culture, design history and urban studies. Her PhD work (2015-2020), which focused on sociology of race and the arts, is the is the first piece of research to fully document the closure, aftermath and legacy creation of a Black-led arts organization; the first empirical analysis of what happens at this point of stress. Such closures often happen quickly and are complex. They are sometimes documented after the fact using document analysis and archival material. However, this empirical data-rich analysis of what happens in real time when an organization implodes is important because it bridges the gap between what policy documents say about the role and function of cultural diversity in the arts and what happens (and is needed) on the ground. Her book from this project is currently in development.

Before arriving in the US, Dr. Gregory lived and worked in multiple UK cities, and Paris (France). Over a 10-year period, She taught at the Royal College of Art, University of Warwick, Bath Spa University, Kingston University, Loughborough University and the University for the Creative Arts in subjects connected to her research expertise, ranging from the sociology of Race to the history and theory of Fashion. This teaching coincided with museum education work in the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Musée du Louvre. She says:

“I have come from a resilient lineage of people who survived enslavement in Jamaica, as well as the Windrush and subsequent eras of overt and systemic racisms in the UK. This means that I understand, and work to reverse, the precarity of a career in the arts for those without generational wealth, and other societal and skin privileges. All of my work has been focused on increasing access to the arts. It also means that I have first-hand experience of a number of jobs within arts organizations, having begun as a gallery assistant at the National Portrait Gallery in London and a full time unpaid curatorial intern at Tate Liverpool, then having  gone on to work as a family museum education tours in the Louvre, and to found my own museum education social enterprise. Because of the breadth of my experiences, my teaching can take an approach that focuses on ethics and accountability in all areas of arts leadership.”

JOURNAL ARTICLES:

Gregory, D. (2018) A Tale of Two Houses: tracing transitory changes in two Jamaican social classes at the time of independence In Chekinska, C. ed. (2018) Aesthetic Blackness? Cloth, Culture and the African Diasporas, special edition of Textile: Cloth & Cultures. Routledge, Taylor & Francis. (Illustrated Chapter, 5000 words)

BOOK CHAPTERS:

Gregory, D. (2015) An Empire of One’s Own: Individualism and domestic built form in 21st Century Jamaica. In Lees­Maffei, G. & Fallan, K. eds (2015) Designing Worlds: National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization. Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford. (Illustrated Chapter, 5000 words)

Gregory, D. (2014) Dutch Wax and Display: London and the Art of Yinka Shonibare. In: Rall, D. eds. (2014) Fashion and War in Popular Culture. 1st ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Illustrated chapter, 9000 words)