Isobel Harbison
I am a writer and historian, and I lecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. I write about art, film and culture, about images and what they do to us.
I have contributed to a range of magazines, newspapers and journals including the Financial Times, the LRB, the London Magazine, The Baffler and Tolka. I regularly give talks at museums and galleries, previously at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, the National Gallery, the Hayward, the Irish Museum of Modern Art. I also curate and present screenings, recently at the Belfast Film Festival, the BFI, Tate, Ulster Museum, and IMMA. In 2014, I was awarded a Fellowship in Arts Journalism by the UK’s Arts Foundation and have since been awarded writing residencies and research fellowships in the US, UK and Ireland. In 2023, my writing was shortlisted for the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer’s Award, 2024. The same year it was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
From 2025 - 2026 I have been a research associate at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin gathering stories and testimonies from artists and filmmakers active in the north of Ireland from 1968 to create an archive of art and film in Belfast (link here).
My first book, Performing Image, is about art and social media and was published by the MIT Press in 2019. Link here
My second book, about women, night, light and power in post-war Las Vegas, will be published by MUP in 2027. More here
I am now writing my third book.
✨️
i.harbison at gold.ac.uk
Instagram: @isobel.harbison