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I am a Senior Lecturer in Art History in the School of Communication and Arts. My research often focusses on the relationship between contemporary art and time, working across the areas of philosophy, time studies, art history and critical theory. I completed my art history PhD at the University of Melbourne. Prior to joining UQ, I was ARC Senior Research Associate at the University of Melbourne, and have also worked as a curator and editor with various arts institutions.

My books include the monograph Parallel Presents: The Art of Pierre Huyghe (MIT Press, 2012, winner of AAANZ Best Book Prize 2013); the co-edited anthology and now low-key cult classic Making Worlds: Art and Science Fiction (Surpllus, 2015); Pierre Huyghe: TarraWarra International 2015 (catalogue for the first major solo exhibition of Huyghe's work in Australia); Tom Nicholson: Lines Towards Another (IMA and Sternberg Press, 2018); and Robert Smithson: Time Crystals (Monash University Publishing, 2018), the latter published to accompany a major exhibition of works by Robert Smithson that I co-curated with Chris McAuliffe for presentation at the UQ Art Museum and Monash University Museum of Art. My research has been supported by organisations including the Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Australia, Arts Victoria, the Terra Foundation for American Art, City of Melbourne, the Australia Korea Foundation, the Australia Research Council, and the Gordon Darling Foundation, and I also publish widely in arts magazines and exhibition catalogues.

I have presented invited talks on my research at numerous institutions including for the Biennale of Sydney, Mildura Palimpsest Biennale, Wellington City Gallery New Zealand, Marian Goodman Gallery New York, the Australian Center for the Moving Image, Institute of Modern Art Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, Gertrude Contemporary, Auckland University of Technology, Institute for Visual Research University of Oxford, Artspace Sydney, and Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts, Finland. In 2013, I was the recipient of a 2013 Art Gallery of New South Wales residential fellowship at the Cité internationale des arts, Paris.

My current work includes research into the histories of queer art in Australia, as part of the KINK research collective, accessible at queeraustralianart.com. In 2024, KINK were appointed as Adjunct Curators to the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Currently available to supervise art history MPhil and PhD projects: I particularly welcome applications from researchers working in the areas of contemporary art, queer theory, feminisms, geophilosophy, science fiction, Australian art, or time studies (or all of the above!).

Andrea Bubenik is an expert in Renaissance and Baroque Art, and the continued reception of early modern visual culture. She is an Associate Professor in Art History in the School of Communication and Arts, and was the Director of the UQ Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions between 2019-2022. Her research interests include early modern printmaking, links between art and science, court cultures and collecting, and histories of reception for both iconic and lesser known works of art.

Her books include The Persistence of Melancholia in Art and Culture (edited, 2019), Perspectives on the Art of Wenceslaus Hollar (co-edited with Anne Thackray, 2016), and Reframing Albrecht Dürer: The Appropriation of Art, 1528-1700 (2013), which was awarded the AAANZ best book prize (2014). Andrea’s forthcoming monograph, Living Pictures: The Renaissance Artist-Scientist explores the afterlives of the animal, plant, and rock studies by Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci, and is supported by a grant from AIAH/AAANZ.

Andrea's international profile includes visiting fellowships at the Warburg Institute in London, the Central Institute of Art History (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte) in Munich, the Institute of Art History (Ustav Dějin Umění) in Prague, and the Huntington Library in LA. Andrea is a strong advocate for collaboration with arts and culture institutions and the translation of academic research into more public platforms. She curated two major exhibitions at the UQ Art Museum: Ecstasy: Baroque and Beyond (2017), and Five Centuries of Melancholia (2014), both accompanied by exhibition catalogues. She also delivers an annual public art history course at QAGOMA (Queensland Gallery of Art), and has given public lectures at galleries in Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, and the UK.

As an experienced teacher and supervisor, with more than twenty successful supervisions at the Honours, MPhil and PhD levels, Andrea is especially proud of her students’ successes. She supervises local, national, and international internship placements in art galleries and museums, and developed an undergraduate study abroad option for UQ students, ‘Art and Architecture in Venice’ which takes place on site in Venice, Italy. She welcomes expressions of interest from prospective HDR students.