Professor Roxane Permar

Position: Research Fellow, Centre for Island Creativity

Research Interests

Roxane Permar uses methods drawn from socially engaged art practice to create situations which foster cross-cultural, inter-disciplinary, cross-generational engagement and knowledge exchange. Her Shetland home forms the foundation for her social art practice, where she has initiated and realised projects since 1990. In 2021 she initiated a new project, Landscape in Pain, in response to the Viking Energy Wind Farm development in Shetland. Currently she is working with Dr Siún Carden and Sian Wilde from Who Cares? Scotland on the research project, Home and Belonging, with care experienced young people in Shetland. Her on-going collaboration with artist Susan Timmins, Cold War Projects, explores memories and perceptions of the Cold War on both sides of the former Iron Curtain with particular reference to the northern and Arctic regions. They investigate the Cold War as it exists physically in the landscape and in the memory, considering how art can re-imagine this period and give insight into the impact of Cold War military installations on local populations past and present. Through the integration of pedagogical, artistic and academic discourses, she is engaged in an on-going investigation into the relationship between virtuality and socially engaged art practice, most recently supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.