Staff Profiles

Jill Bennett is founding director of the National Institute for Experimental Arts [NIEA] and previously founded the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics at UNSW, where she also holds the position of Associate Dean Research, College of Fine Arts.

She has published widely on visual culture, contemporary art and new media and has a particular interest in transdisciplinary, experimental methods and their application to art, exhibitions, theory and everyday life.

Jill is currently completing a book and ARC funded research project titled "Practical Aesthetics" on the application of creative thinking and practice to world events. A further ARC Linkage project "Construction, Connection, Community" (with Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre and Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai) investigates the practical use of creativity in relation to cultural and urban development, focusing on the Asian region.  Public events relating to this project have included Extra/Ordinary Cities (Bachdang Restaurant, Canley Vale, 2008) and Under Construction (Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai 2008).

In 2010 Jill initiated the HotHouse project, co-convening a symposium on art and ecology at the Sydney Opera House. HotHouse is a collaboration with Object Australian Centre for Design and the City of Sydney, focused on the delivery of sustainable public art.

Her previous books include "Empathic Vision" (Stanford UP, 2005), a study of art and traumatic events, and two new media monographs. She has curated a number of exhibitions including "REALEmergency" (2009), which focused on the visual culture of emergency events, and "Prepossession"  (2005) with Felicity Fenner, on the politics of dispossession in South Africa, Indigenous Australia and Northern Ireland.  Previous major research projects included "Ethical Globalism", a study of contemporary art and politics in the context of globalisation.

Jill is a member of the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts. She is a recipient of the VC’s award for Excellence in Postgraduate Supervision and supervises PhDs in theory and practice.