Craig Richardson has provided research leadership across several major institutions, including leading the Art and Design submissions for Oxford Brookes University in RAE 2008, for Northumbria University in REF 2014, and for Loughborough University’s Creative Arts in REF 2021
Before joining Loughborough in 2016, he was a Research Professor at Northumbria University, where he later became Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in collaboration with the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, serving as Principal Investigator for the Northumbria–Sunderland Centre for Doctoral Training. Under his leadership, Northumbria’s REF 2014 submission achieved a top ten ranking for research power in Art and Design. In REF 2021, Loughborough’s Art and Design research was ranked in the top five for research power.
In 2023/24, he served as the School’s Interim Associate Dean for Research and Innovation.
Richardson has published thirty chapters, articles, and catalogue essays since 2000, focusing primarily on Scottish and British art, as well as on artist-led interventions in museums. His monograph Scottish Art Since 1960 was published by Routledge in 2011.
A graduate of The Glasgow School of Art (B.A. Hons, M.F.A., and PhD), he has exhibited internationally at venues including Chisenhale Gallery, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and Jack Tilton Gallery in New York. In 2004 and 2005, he was nominated for the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Award for Visual Artists.
Craig has also curated exhibitions at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Milton Keynes Gallery, supported by funding from Arts Council England and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. From 2016 to 2020, he served as Editor-in-Chief of Routledge’s Journal of Visual Art Practice, and he continues to sit on its editorial board as well as that of Visual Culture in Britain.
Craig began his teaching career at The Glasgow School of Art, followed by lectureships at the Universities of Derby and Oxford Brookes. His academic management experience includes serving as Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes in the School of Arts and Humanities at Oxford Brookes, and later as Associate Dean for Regional Engagement at Northumbria University in Newcastle.
Between 2011 and 2015, as Professor of Fine Art at Northumbria, he collaborated to the development of the AHRC-funded Northumbria/BALTIC Partnership, which was recognised with a Times Higher Education (THES) Award.
From May 2025 Craig is the Deputy Chair for the REF 2029 Sub-panel 32: ‘Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory.’
Following the award of several AHRC grants, Craig completed two terms as a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, concluding in 2015. During this time, he chaired numerous prioritisation panels for Studentships, Research Grants, and Follow-On Impact funding. He also served as the attending panel member and lead academic in New Delhi for the inaugural UnBox Fellowship scheme, a collaboration between the AHRC and the British Council.
More recently, he has reviewed applications for the Carnegie Trust and has served extensively as a panel member for the Art Evaluation Panel of Portugal’s public funding agency for research and development, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT). In 2022, he chaired the Visual Arts and Related Arts Sub-panel for the Periodic Assessment of Research, Development, Artistic and Other Creative Activities for the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic.
From 2007 to 2010, he was an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Dundee. He has also served on the Venice Biennale Fellowship Steering Group (British Council) and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).