Welcome to this web site for Dr Iain Biggs, RWA

I started my professional life working as a painter/printmaker/teacher and then became involved in a whole weave of different practices. These included deep mapping, writing, drawing, and, occasionally, site-specific performance and other time-based work. Like my research interests, all this is largely oriented to exploring the relationship between people and ecologies of place, community, memory, and identity.

I’m currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Dundee and a Visiting Research Fellow at Bath Spa University. Formally I was employed at UWE, Bristol, where I worked as Reader in Visual Art Practice and then as Director of the PLaCE (England) Interdisciplinary Research Centre. I left UWE in March 2013 but continue to work with the PLaCE International (UK), LAND2, and Mapping Spectral Traces networks. I’ve also held a Moore Institute Visiting Fellowship at the National University of Ireland, Galway (now Galway University).

Like the artist Alastair MacLennan I have come to see teaching as one limb – maybe even the trunk – of my creative practice. I’m still involved in working with and examining doctoral students, most recently in England, Ireland and the Netherlands.

This site documents both what I’m doing now and some past aspects of my work – deep mappings, various kinds of writing, wall-based visual art, and book works published through Wild Conversations Press Although it has to be divided into discrete sections, you’ll will find that there are numerous overlaps, blending and general ‘leakages’ between these activities – which accurately reflects my approach.

Photographic credits – unless otherwise credited all photographic images used on this site are my own.