Lauren Stephens

My thesis title is ‘A Sartrean Look at Art and Museum Ethics’. I am supervised by Vid Simoniti and Yiota Vassilopoulou.

My thesis questions cultural institutions’ problematic responses to restitution. In my thesis, I argue museum objects and their consideration would be better served if there were an applied existentialist aesthetics and ethics inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre. My proposed existentialist framework is then illustrated by the increasingly ambiguous case studies investigating the restitution of the Parthenon marbles, the Benin bronzes, and the Waterloo teeth. During my studies, I have participated in several curatorial studentships. Currently, I am Philosopher in Residence at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery, writing reviews and reflections on socially engaged art.

Lauren Stephens