Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Dr Mary Ikoniadou
Senior Lecturer
Dr Mary Ikoniadou is a Senior Lecturer at the Leeds School of Arts. She teaches on the BA (Hons) in Graphic Design. Her research interests are visual and cultural politics and design history, focusing on periodical studies and refugee publishing.
Mary has taught UK-based undergraduate and postgraduate modules in art and design theory, history and studio-practice for fourteen years and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Before starting an academic career, she was a Graphic Design practitioner in London, producing work in collaboration with cultural institutions, artists, curators and publishers. She also co-published an indie magazine and participated in several book and zine fairs.
Mary has held research fellowships at the British School at Athens, the State Library in Berlin, Germany and the Jan van Eyck Akademie in the Netherlands.
Current Teaching
Mary teaches on the BA (Hons) in Graphic Design and supervises PhDs in art, design practice, and theory. She welcomes PhD proposals on her research interests.
Research Interests
Mary's research, clusters in the intersection of visual culture, design and cultural history during the Cold War. She is particularly interested in the critical juxtaposition of images and texts in publishing and their potential to intersect with everyday politics, encourage aesthetic and political shifts, shape cultural identities and intervene in the sociopolitical sphere.
Besides her research, Mary co-runs the research project 'The Politics of the Page: Visuality and Materiality in Illustrated Periodicals across Cold War Borders'. Since 2019, she has been co-directing the research and community project Patterns of Migration, which explores stories of migration through clothing and textiles, and Blind Spot, a regular meeting platform for the exchange of creative and critical work by female contributors in the arts and humanities in the North West.
Mary is currently writing her monograph on the critical role of an illustrated periodical in forming political subjectivities during the Cold War. She has published on the role of print and publishing cultural practices, refugee publishing, periodical studies, Cold War visual culture, visual activism and solidarities, and their intersections.
Mary is on the advisory board of several scientific and professional organisations and the editorial board of JEPS, the Journal of European Periodical Studies.
