Biography
Sarah French completed her CHASE-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award from 2018-2023. This was in partnership with Sussex's Art History department (MAH) and Hastings Museum & Art Gallery. Lead supervisor: Prof Meaghan Clarke.
Her thesis is titled 'Doings of the Sunbeam: Contextualising the Collections of Lady Brassey (1839-87), 1870s-80s'. Annie Brassey (1839-1887) was a travel writer and collector best known for her eleven month voyage around the world in her family's yacht, Sunbeam R.Y.S, from 1876. The thesis looked across extensive visual and material culture collections, as well literary sources, to uncover more about this women's achievements, to form tangible connections between the many agents active within a vast network of production, circulation and exchange, and to contextualise the collections for audiences today within a decolonial framework. She curated the exhibition 'Photographs of a Victorian Voyage: From the Annie Brassey Collection' at Hastings Museum Art Gallery, September 2022 - January 2023.
Prior to starting her doctorate, Sarah worked for five years at the photographic archive and art collection of Lee Miller (1907-77) and Roland Penrose (1900-84). She has since been a Resarch Associate on the AHRC-funded project Indigenous Knowledges (University of Kent & York, in partnership with Wellcome Collection) and a short-term fellow at the Huntington Library, California.
Role
Doctoral Tutor and AHRC CHASE-funded PhD Researcher