About

ANTHONY DOWNEY BIOGRAPHY AND CURRENT RESEARCH

Anthony Downey is an academic, author, and editor. Developing collaborative partnerships with artists, theorists and other cultural practitioners and institutions, Downey’s interdisciplinary research contributes to and supports a critical understanding of postcolonial art practices, specifically those from the Middle East and Global South. To date, he has focused on how visual strategies re-think colonial histories, the politics of knowledge production, decolonizing methodologies, epistemological violence, online archives, and the discriminatory role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in models of post-digital image production. 


Downey is Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa (Birmingham City University). In his role as Associate Director for External Research Funding, he oversees the development and submission of AHRC funding applications and REF research outputs for early career and senior career researchers. Downey also co-convenes the Art Activisms (AA) research cluster at Birmingham Institute of Creative Arts (BICA), where he develops collaborative partnerships across Birmingham and internationally. In his capacity as Birmingham City University-lead, he is the Cultural and Commissioning Lead on a four-year multi-disciplinary AHRC Network Plus award (2020-2024), where his research focuses on supporting collaborative cultural practices, decolonizing knowledge systems, and the expansion of educational provision for people with disabilities in Lebanon, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Jordan. The latter award was preceded by an AHRC Development Award (2019-2021). 

Downey sits on the editorial boards of three Peer-Reviewed, Open Access journals, including Third Text (Routledge), Journal of Digital War (Palgrave Macmillan), and the Journal of Memory, Mind & Media (Cambridge University Press). He is the series editor for Research/Practice (Sternberg Press/MIT Press, 2019–ongoing), which includes volumes produced in collaboration with Michael Rakowitz, Heba Y. Amin, Larissa Sansour and, forthcoming in 2023 and 2024 respectively, Trevor Paglen and Rabih Mroué. Anthony also sits on the International Series Advisory Board for New Directions in Contemporary Art (2020-ongoing).

Recent and upcoming publications include Decolonising Vision: Algorithmic Anxieties and the Post-Digital Image (forthcoming, MIT Press, 2024); Nida Sinnokrot: Palestine is Not a Garden (Sternberg Press/MIT Press, 2024); Trevor Paglen: Adversarially Evolved Hallucinations (Sternberg Press/MIT Press, 2024); Khalil Rabah: Falling Forward—Works 1995- 2025 (Sharjah Art Foundation and Hatje Cantz, 2023); Shona Illingworth: Topologies of Air  (Sternberg Press/Power Plant, 2022); Heba Y. Amin: The General’s Stork (Sternberg Press, 2020); Larissa Sansour: Heirloom (Sternberg Press, 2020), Michael Rakowitz: I’m good at love, I’m good at hate, it’s in between I freeze (Sternberg Press, 2019); Critique in Practice (Sternberg Press, 2019); Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East (Sternberg Press, 2016); and Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2015).

From 2011-2018, Downey was the Editor-in-Chief of Ibraaz (currently under redevelopment), an online research journal that commissioned and supported research and collaborative practices from the Middle East and Global South. In 2020, he curated Heba Y. Amin: When I See the Future (Mosaic Rooms, London) and, in 2022, Heba Y. Amin: When I See the Future, Chapter II (Zilberman Gallery, Berlin). In 2025, we will curate Heba Y. Amin: When I See the Future, Chapter III, the final part of this interdisciplinary research project, in Istanbul. In 2025, Downey and Amin will co-author When I see the Future, I Close my Eyes: Digital Methodologies and the Techno-Politics of Programmed Vision (forthcoming, Sternberg Press/MIT Press).

E: anthonydowneyblog@gmail.com
For a fuller list of Anthony’s books and research, see here and check out the links below:
https://www.sternberg-press.com/?s=anthony+downey&post_type=product https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/anthony-downey
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/memory-mind-and-media/information/about-this-journal/editorial-board http://www.thirdtext.org/editors
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/journal/42984

For full listings of teaching, research awards and other activities see here:
https://www.bcu.ac.uk/art/about-us/our-expertise/our-staff/anthony-downey
https://gtr.ukri.org/person/C37D7896-5CDE-43DD-ABAB-05C291BC757E

Full list of extended professional affiliations: