Laura Beaney
Key information
- Qualifications
- BA, MA
- Email address
- 675749@soas.ac.uk
- Thesis title
- Beyond Exile: Gender, Identity and Artistic Practices in Second-Generation Women Belonging to the Iranian Diaspora in the US.
- Internal Supervisors
- Professor Dina Matar
Biography
For more than a decade cultural writer, art gallery director, and author Laura Cherrie Beaney has divided her time between artists' studios, documenting the social experiences and creative practices that encapsulate the contemporary moment in the Middle East and beyond. Conflating her fascinations with social anthropology and the arts via her varied pursuits, Laura has written extensively on the art of the MENSA region contributing to publications including Canvas Magazine, Tatler, and Harper’s Bazaar Art. In 2019 she published her first book, Crossing the Catwalk: Transvestism in Contemporary Fashion and Culture with Academica Press.
A passionate contributor to not-for-profit and humanitarian organisations including the MOP Foundation, Laura is currently working for curatorial platform, Archaeology of the Final Decade (AOTFD), as a research assistant. The non-profit platform excavates and researches histories of nations condemned by social displacement, cultural annihilation or deliberate disappearance. AOTFD engages with accounts of culture which have been lost through material destruction, acts of censorship, political, economic or human contingencies.
Research interests
- Gender studies
- Diaspora studies
- Iranian studies
- Migration