Maxine has taught in the department of Fine Art since 1993. She teaches across all levels of the BA Fine Art course and is Programme Leader for MA Fine Art. Having initially trained in textiles, the dialogues between the medium specific conventions of textile and the post-medium condition of contemporary art have developed as a distinctive feature of the curriculum.
Her teaching interest and expertise, however, extends beyond ‘the expanded field’ of textiles and is more broadly concerned with a material sensibility within contemporary fine art practice that transcends media boundaries. This includes the wealth of associated interdisciplinary discourses (material culture; feminist theory and issues of subjectivity; poststructuralist theory; the poetics and politics of space; the aesthetics of affect; ‘New Materialism’; sculpture, installation, and embodied practice; the decorative and relationships between fine art, applied art, and craft) that are both particular to textile and inform the richness and diversity of contemporary practice.
Her teaching expertise at postgraduate level lies in research methodology/methods with respect to practice-based research, the distinctive epistemic dimension of artworks, and the particular role of practice within the context of research. She also has an interest in reflective practice and the use of learning journals, delivering lectures and seminars on the subject to both undergraduates and postgraduates.
She has supervised/co-supervised three doctoral students to successful completion, is currently supervising/co-supervising a further four practice-based PhD students, (internally and externally) and has undertaken the role of examiner for six doctoral projects.