Dr Matt Lodder with students

An impassioned opinion piece about the value of art history has been written by Dr Matt Lodder in The Independent.

Dr Lodder, lecturer in Contemporary Art in the School of Philosophy and Art History, used his opinion piece to underline why he believed art history is such an incredible subject to study.

He said: “Fundamentally, the study of visual culture is endlessly fascinating – students on my courses will study the chaotic cabarets of Weimar Berlin, the political impacts of Pussy Riot, the performance art practice of 1950s Japan and the artistic responses to the AIDS crisis, amongst other topics – and hugely rewarding in terms of the breadth and depth of knowledge students are able to acquire."

He also emphasised that art history was a subject open to anyone: “Despite its image as the domain of a privileged elite, the humanities continue to be taken by a diverse student population. In the School of Philosophy and Art History at Essex, we have undergraduates from a dozen countries, with 27 per cent of our students from backgrounds of traditionally low participation in higher education.”

• Read Dr Lodder’s full article on The Independent website