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Magdalene College Cambridge

Dr Sophie Pickford

Dr Sophie Pickford is a College Lecturer in History of Art.

Sophie Pickford is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge, and a Senior Teaching Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning. Sophie holds a PhD in History of Art from the University of Cambridge and was a Junior Research Fellow at St. Edmund’s College. She also holds a first class LLB and worked as a lawyer in the City of London for several years.

Sophie has published on subjects from music in the French domestic interior (1500-1600) to Bloomsbury, ballet and the arts. Her current research focuses on early twentieth-century British art, with an emphasis on the cross-cultural interaction between the Bloomsbury Group and the Ballets Russes in the 1920s and ‘30s. In terms of educational practice, Sophie’s work centres on the pedagogy of doctoral supervision. She is currently leading a University-wide project to enhance support for doctoral supervisors. Sophie is also interested in decolonized teaching practices, on which she recently gave a paper at the Society for Research into Higher Education’s international conference.

Research Interests

  • The French Renaissance interior.
  • Bloomsbury, ballet and the arts.
  • The pedagogy of doctoral supervision.
  • Decolonized teaching practices.

Qualifications

  • BA (Hons) history of Art, King's College, Cambridge (Starred First Class Honours)
  • PhD, History of Art, St. John's College, Cambridge
  • LLB (First Class), The College of Law, London
  • Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Cambridge

Selected Publications

‘Lydia Lopokova: Bloomsbury, Ballet and the Arts’, in WE ARE HERE: Women and the Visual Arts at Cambridge Colleges 1900-2020, Exh. Cat., Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge, 6 March-24 May 2020, pp.17-25.

'Music in the French Domestic Interior (1500-1600).’ In The Music Room in Early Modern France and Italy, ed. Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti, pp. 79-93. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2012.