Sarah E. James is an art historian, writer and curator. She is professor of visual culture at manchester school of art, MMu.

Her research specialisms are contemporary art; postwar art; the art and material culture of the former Eastern Bloc (particularly east germany); the visual cultures and exhibition practices of the Cold War. She is an expert on the history and theory of photography; photobooks; documentary practices and photojournalism; ephemeral art practices, including mail art’s global and activist networks; art and collectivism, and the historical avant-gardes.

She has published two major monographs: Common Ground: German Photographic Cultures Beyond the Iron Curtain, (Yale University Press, 2013), and Paper Revolutions: An Invisible Avant-Garde, (the MIT Press, 2022).

She has contributed essays to major exhibition catalogues for galleries and museums around the world, and has written numerous academic essays, chapter and articles.

Over the last twenty years she has published over 90 feature essays and reviews in the international art press, writing frequently for  magazines including Art Monthly, Frieze, Frieze D/E and Photoworks.

Her research and writing have been recognised by major grants and fellowships from international funding bodies including the AHRC, British Academy, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Gerda Henkel Foundation, and the Paul Mellon Foundation.

Sarah was recently Senior Curator of Exhibitions at Tate Liverpool (2022-2023), where she curated The Turner Prize 2022, and led the curatorial team in the realisation of the current and future programme of collection displays, exhibitions and touring shows. She has participated in curatorial and research projects with HKW Berlin; the Photographers’ Gallery, London; and The MoMA, New York. She recently co-curated an exhibition with Prof. Sara Blaylock (University of Minnesota, Duluth). Titled Anti-Social Art: Experimental Practices in Late East Germany, at the Tweed Museum, Minnesota in 2022.

Sarah is regularly invited to give public lectures and talks at museums and galleries, including The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Tate Modern, London; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; The MoMA, New York; Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art; The Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden, and the Albertinum, Dresden.

She has been invited to give papers at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, York, Sussex, Nottingham, Leicester de Montfort, Newcastle, University of Colorado Boulder, Rutgers, the Courtauld Institute, the Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Universität Leipzig and the Freie Universität Berlin.

Sarah was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside in 1978. she was a Gerda Henkel Professorial Fellow based in Frankfurt am Main (2020-22), and a Paul Mellon Mid-Career Fellow (2019). From 2010-19 she was Lecturer/Assoc. Prof. in Art History at UCL, London. Prior to that she was Lecturer in History of Art the University of Oxford (2009-10), and an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin (2007-9). She’s held Senior Humboldt visiting research fellowships at the Universität Leipzig (2016) and the Goethe Universität Frankfurt (2018), and has been a visiting lecturer at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and the University of Cambridge.

Sarah received a B.A. hons in Social and Political Sciences and the History of Art from King’s College, the University of Cambridge (2001),followed by an M.A. (2002) and PhD (2007) in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.