Dr Timothy Stott
Head of Department, History of Art and Architecture
Associate Professor in Modern and Contemporary Art History
Research interests
Dr Timothy Stott is a historian of art and design and is Associate Professor in Modern and Contemporary Art History at Trinity College Dublin. His early work studied the history of participation in modern and contemporary art, with a focus on play, games, and cybernetics. Expanding his interest in systems as an organisational tool for art and design, more recent research ranges across the history of environmental art and design and the political ecology of representations of the natural world through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Of particular interest is the intersection of design, techno-science, and ideas of nature in wildlife habitat design, novel ecosystems, and sympoiesis and co-design with other species. Recent publications include Buckminster Fuller’s World Game and Its Legacy (2021) and (with Johanna Gosse) Nervous Systems: Art, Systems, and Politics since the 1960s (2022). His current book project studies the design of novel ecosystems since 1945. From 2022 to 2026, he was Head of the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Trinity. He is a member of the Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities, the Trinity Science and Society Research Centre and the Historical Studies multidisciplinary committee of the Royal Irish Academy.
Selected Research Publication
- (With Payson R. Stevens) ‘The Bretherton Diagram: Design and Earth System Science’, in Design and Culture, forthcoming 2027.
- ‘Teaching Ecocritical Art History’ in CarlAnders Safstrom and Glenn Loughran, eds, Events of Art and Education in Post-climate Times, Routledge, 2025.
- Nervous Systems: Art, Systems, and Politics since the 1960s, co-edited with Johanna Gosse, Duke University Press, 2022.
- Buckminster Fuller's World Game and Its Legacy, Routledge, 2021.
- ‘Ecocritical Art History’, Art History 43, no. 3, May 2020, pp. 640-645.
- ‘Systems in Play: Simon Nicholson’s Design 12 Course, University of California, Berkeley, 1966’, Journal of Design History 32, no. 3, September 2019, pp. 223–239.
- ‘Operable Abstraction: How Toys Changed the Logic of Modern Sculpture’, Sculpture Journal 28, no. 2, 2019, pp. 161-173.
- ‘Something from Nothing: Tino Sehgal’s Systemic Objects’, Thresholds, 47, 2019.
- ‘Ludic Pedagogies at the College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley, 1966 to 1972’, in Kjetil Fallan, ed. The Culture of Nature in the History of Design, Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.
- ‘When Attitudes Became Toys: Jasia Reichardt’s Play Orbit’, Art History 41, no.2, April 2018, pp. 344-369.
- ‘How Things Grow: Gabriel Orozco’s Samurai Tree: Invariants (2005)’, Art Journal 76, nos. 3-4, Fall 2017, pp. 32-47.
Teaching
My teaching covers modern and contemporary art, visual culture, and design. I teach modules on the histories and futures of climate change; the environmental humanities; global contemporary art; art, design, and nature since the 1930s; and the visual culture of science. I welcome proposals for a research degree from suitably qualified applicants.
Dr. Stott on the TCD Research Support System
Contact Details
Dr Timothy Stott
Associate Professor in Modern and Contemporary Art History
Department of History of Art and Architecture
School of Histories and Humanities
F.08, Provost's Stables
Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin
D02 PN40, Ireland
Email: stottt@tcd.ie