Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania & the Americas

The Sainsbury Research Unit (SRU), based in the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, is a centre for the study of the arts of Africa, the Pacific region and the Americas, providing high quality facilities and a specialist research library for its staff, postgraduates and visiting scholars. As part of Art History and World Art Studies and as a member of the Sainsbury Institute for Art the SRU contributes to a substantial and lively scholarly community in the Sainsbury Centre.

The SRU offers MA and PhD degrees, with generous scholarships and funding support.  It also offers visiting fellowships for postdoctoral scholars and hosts regular symposia and academic meetings.  Combining anthropological, art-historical, archaeological and museological approaches, SRU research and teaching are focused on the distinctive cultures of the three regions, especially how artworks and objects are made, used, and circulated – in effect, how they matter to people, both in their original contexts and in the contexts of museums and exhibitions.  The MA and PhD programmes are intended for those interested in careers in higher education, museums and galleries, publishing, journalism and development.

The SRU makes full use of the Sainsbury Collection, on display in adjacent galleries, which is renowned for its works of art from the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, as well as for its antiquities and modern works by Picasso, Moore, Giacometti and Bacon.