About Me: Biography and cv

Dr. Kirsty Robertson is Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Museums, Art and Sustainability, as well as Professor and Director of Museum and Curatorial Studies in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University. She also directs the Centre for Sustainable Curating (CSC), which supports research on waste, pollution, and the climate crisis, and promotes the development of low-waste, low-carbon exhibitions and artworks. Robertson has published extensively in critical museum studies, most notably in her book Tear Gas Epiphanies: Protest, Museums, Culture (MQUP, 2019), and in her forthcoming work Countering the Museum: Activism at the Limits of the Institution (Museums in Focus Series, Routledge), which explores how small and micro-collections can reimagine the museum. Robertson has curated exhibitions in Paris, Toronto, Ottawa, New York, and London (ON), and has presented her work in public venues around the world. She is a founding member of the Synthetic Collective, a group of artists, scientists, and cultural researchers addressing plastics pollution in the Great Lakes Region. She is also co-lead on A Museum for Future Fossils, an ongoing “vernacular museum” project that responds curatorially to ecological crisis.