Sabine Dahl Nielsen

CV

Short presentation

Sabine Dahl Nielsen is a cultural studies theorist researching contemporary curatorial and institutional practices, with a special focus on transcultural and radical democratic perspectives on art and culture.

Dahl Nielsen holds a PhD in Modern culture and cultural dissemination from the University of Copenhagen with the dissertation Art in Public Spaces: Conflicts and Negotiations as Critical Political Practices (2015). She is author of the books Det fotografiske rum (2011) and Konflikt og forhandling: Kunstens rolle i samtidens offentlige byrum (2022), co-editor of the special issue of Journal of Aesthetics and Culture entitled 'Art in Public Spaces: New Roles for Art and Curating in Times of Transnational Mobility' (2022), and editor of the exhibition catalogues Art Incorporated: The Role of Art in Urban Development (2008) and Transit: Art, Mobility and Migration in the Age of Globalisation (2019). Her work on art in public spaces, radical democratic forms of participation and collaborative artistic and curatorial practices have been published in journals such as NKA – Journal of Contemporary Art, PARSE journal, Periskop, Nordisk museology and Nordic Journal of Cultural Policy, as well as in anthologies including A Space Called Public (2013), Kunst, kultur og deltagelse (2018) and Curatorial Challenges (2019).

Dahl Nielsen is currently principal Investigator of the collective research project Transcultural Contact Zones: Negotiating the Role of Art Institutions in Contemporary Societies Characterized by Migration (2023-2027, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation). This project investigates the specific challenges that European art institutions currently face when they seek to address culturally pluralised publics in today’s migration-induced societies. Previously, Dahl Nielsen worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the collective research project Togetherness in Difference: Reimagining identities, communities and histories through art (2019-2022, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Grant holder: Professor Anne Ring Petersen). This project engaged with the effects and affects produced by migration within the fields of art and curating and related to Dahl Nielsen’s first postdoc project entitled Transit: Mobility and Migration in the Age of Globalisation, (2015-2018, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation). Transit: Mobility and Migration in the Age of Globalisation was a practice based curatorial research project and among other things it resulted in the multi-sited exhibition Transit, which took place at KØS Museum of art in public spaces, The Exhibition Space Sydhavn Station and at a series of train stations along the S-train line E (2018-2019), an exhibition catalogue (2019) and a series of debates carried out in collaboration with the newspaper Information (2018-2019). 

Fields of interest:

• Contemporary artistic, curatorial and institutional practices
• The interrelations between globalisation, migration and culture
• Radical democracy theory
• Art in public spaces
• Critical urban studies, in particular the relationship between art and the city

Introductory remarks on publicationslist