Department of History of Art
Rebecca Mellor
MA History of Art 2016
Current Course: PhD student in the History of Art
I am working as a PhD student in the History of Art, studying the reception of Greco-Roman ‘erotic’ collections of the long 18th century in the early 19th century Victorian public museum. The flexibility of my master’s course at York meant that as a relative newcomer to art history I was able to take a range of subjects allowing me the opportunity to find my specialism in classical reception studies- a topic that would almost certainly have been lost to me in a more restrictive environment. In terms of skill sets, I can safely say that the training, support and academic rigour of the History of Art MA course at York has opened doors to me as a PhD student that would have been firmly closed before. The department’s emphasis on originality of thought and creative problem solving has made research a passion as much as a job. The skills demanded in postgraduate study in a complex field such as the History of Art are hugely transferable beyond my academic life and I have found that my time at York has given me the ability to adapt quickly and with ease in almost any work environment- in my case anywhere from teaching to museum/gallery work.
