Art History staff have a wide range of research expertise, including in Indigenous Australian art, contemporary art and critical theory, art and feminism, Renaissance and Baroque art, Italian art of the late middle ages, and the arts of the Asia-Pacific. Their research projects include books and exhibitions on cross-cultural mobility; art and melancholia; contemporary art and science fiction; Indigenous Australian art historiography and body art; and the politics of utopia in contemporary art of the documentary mode.

We collaborate regularly with a variety of academic and industry partners, fostering extensive networks across the fields of curatorship, art publishing, and museology. Art history staff have curated major exhibitions in partnership with national and international museums and galleries such as the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth; Stony Brook University, New York; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and the University of Queensland Art Museum. We are also frequent contributors to national and international arts media.

Our research partners and collaborators have included the UQ Art Museum, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, the Research Unit for Public Cultures (University of Melbourne), Cairns Regional Gallery, Australia Museum, Sydney, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Griffith University Queensland College of Art, Queensland University of Technology, the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and QAGOMA.