Dr Maria Fusco is Professor of Interdisciplinary Writing at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Maria is a Belfast born interdisciplinary writer working across art writing, fiction, performance and theory. Previously she was Professor at Northumbria University, Reader at University of Edinburgh and Director of Art Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. in 2025, she is Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge and has been visiting Professor at Hochschule fur Gestaltung (Frankfurt) and Senior Research Fellow at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam through 2018. In addition to serving on many international editorial boards and juries, she has recently joined the Steering Group of the British Art Network and the Editorial Board of the new academic book series Research | Art | Writing published by Brill.

Her practice-led research is award winning, has been translated into twelve languages and is commissioned by leading international bodies and publishers including: Artangel, Art Metropole (Toronto), BBC Radio 4, Book Works, Creative Time (NY), National Theatre Wales, Routledge and funded by bodies such as the AHRC, Arts Council England, Art Fund, The Carnegie Trust, Creative Scotland and The Wellcome Trust. 

Her new works are History of the Present and Who does not envy with us is against is (both 2023). History of the Present is an opera-film co-made with artist filmmaker Margaret Salmon, featuring new compostion by Annea Lockwood. The work explores the legacies of the peacelines in Belfast where Maria grew up. Who does not envy with us is against is is a sole-authored book of essays exploring working-class-ness as method.

Mollspeak (2021), an eleven-channel permanent sound installation commissioned by Museum of the Home, London. The work is a collaboration with French composer, Olivier Pasquet and is voiced by renowned actor, Maxine Peake.

Previous books are Legend of the Necessary Dreamer (2017) described by Chris Kraus as “a new classic of female philosophical fiction”, Give Up Art: Collected Critical Writings (2018) of which James Elkins had written "after a book like this, most nonfiction seemscuriously unaware of what writing can be.” 

She was Founder and Editorial Director of The Happy Hypocrite, an annual journal for experimental writing, has been invited Writer-in-Residence at Kadist Art Foundation (Paris), Lisbon Architecture Trienale and Whitechapel Gallery (London) and is an Hawthornden Fellow, a recipient of the Scottish Book Trust’s Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship and an Engender Fellow at the Royal Opera House, London.

Current research is in three interrelated strands: dialect and ‘non-standard English’ in international critical art writing; fiction as a critical tool in contemporary art, performative writing methodologies. 

Maria supervises students who are interested in hybrid experimental and interdisciplinary forms of writing. This may include: art writing; artists' novels; creative & critical hybrids; experimental & interdisciplinary writing; publishing as practice; writing for performance. She welcomes enquiries from PhD applicants interested in any of these areas.

She is currently supervising practice-led students working on the following project areas: non-normative writing in institutional contexts (funded by SGSAH in collaboration with Dundee Contemporary Arts); non-binary artist's film and zine making; performing the archive (funded by SGSAH) and informal forms of labour in opera production (funded by SGSAH in collaboration with Scottish opera).