_ Ian Russell is an independent curator, researcher and creative mediator who believes passionately in the power of ideas and the importance of communicating them simply and effectively to people. Based in Ireland and the United States, he is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Public Art and Cultural Heritage at Brown University's John Nicholas Brown Center. His current projects include Roadscore (a collaborative artwork with Fiona Hallinan for Brown University), a collaboration with Conor & David for Vacant in Tokyo, a new commission by Dennis McNulty, and the curation of artistic residencies by Nigel Rolfe and Alfio Bonanno for Sculpture in the Parklands as part of EU Transformations.

He recently concluded his curatorship of the 'Placing Voices - Voicing Places' project where he facilitated collaborations between contemporary artists Sean Lynch and Ursula Rani Sarma, academics and local government officials in the exploration of contemporary pasts in inner-city Dublin. He was recently featured as part of Antony Gormley's One and Other in Trafalgar Square, London. He recently curated 'Camera Obscura' - the National College of Art and Design Postgraduate Interim Exhibition. He recently completed his directorship of the 'Abhar agus Meon: Materials and Mentalities' contemporary art exhibition series which occurred at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Newman House and University College Dublin as part of the 6th World Archaeological Congress in 2008.

He is also an Associate Fellow of the Humanities Institute of Ireland at University College Dublin. He previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies. He has also held the NEH Keough Fellowship of the Keough-Naughton Institute at the University of Notre Dame. In 2006-2007, he was a post-doctoral research associate in the School of Histories and Humanities at Trinity College Dublin where he acted as administrator of the Digital Image Project - a frontiers research project in the fields of new media studies and humanities research.

He specialises in contemporary art and design, visual and material cultural theory, intellectual history, anthropological and archaeological theory and heritage studies. He recently published Images, Representations and Heritage (2006: Springer, New York), an edited volume exploring these interests.

He completed his Ph.D. in anthropology, applied psychoanalysis and intellectual history with the Department of History at Trinity College Dublin under Professor Terry Barry where he was the recipient of a Government of Ireland Broad Curriculum Studentship for teaching and a Trinity College postgraduate studentship. His doctoral research focused on the role of things (artefacts, buidlings, spaces, landscapes) in the expression of personal and group identity. Specifically, he examined the intellectual history and impact of the scientific development of archaeology on social and cultural discourses in modern Ireland.

He currently collaborates with Dr Andrew Cochrane on the Visualizing Archaeologies project and with the Metamedia Lab at Stanford University on the study of new media, archaeological research and artistic expression.

You can view his portfolio here.

He also maintains a blog on contemporary art, culture and design at www.culturge.com.