Maja Fowkes

Maja Fowkes is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Art History and World Art Studies at University of East Anglia. Her research centres on artistic engagements with ecology, climate change and the Anthropocene, and the environmental art history of global socialisms. Her publications include Art and Climate Change (Thames & Hudson, 2022), Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 (Thames & Hudson, 2020) and The Green Bloc: Neo-Avant-Garde and Ecology under Socialism (2015). She is co-editor of a special issue of Art Margins on the Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (2025), Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar (2021) as well as the book Revolutionary Drills: Art and Extractivism in the Socialist in the Anthropocene (Amsterdam University Press, 2026-forthcoming). In addition to publishing widely, she curates contemporary art exhibitions, including ‘Potential Agrarianisms’ at Kunsthalle Bratislava (2021), and co-hosts the podcast Left to be Desired. She co-directed the Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories project Confrontations: Sessions in East European Art History. She is Principal Investigator for the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and European Research Council (ERC) supported research project on Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA).

PhD History of Art, University College London
BA + MA History of Art, Philosphical Faculty, University of Zagreb

Maja lectures widely on art and ecology, art and climate change, and art and the Anthropocene, as well as on global East European art and the art histories of socialism.

She welcomes inquiries from prospective PhD students in fields related to her research interests.

Maja is the Principal Investigator of the Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) UKRI/ERC grant

Enviornmental and eco-critical art history
Visual arts and Anthropocene
Comparative Central and East European art history
Art history of global socialisms

Senior Research Fellow, Department of Art History and World Art Studies, School of History and Art History, University of East Anglia, 2025 - 
Co-Director of Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT) at Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, 2018-2025
Co-Convenor of Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative, Central European University, 2013-2018