Professor Modeen supervises seven PhD and 1 MRes research students currently in various areas of inter- and cross-disciplinary studies, which combine academic and creative studies, much of which focuses on place-based investigation, decolonisation, ecological concerns and geo-locational identities. She supervises and lectures across a broad range of subjects as they coincide with studio practice and contributed extensively to undergraduate and Masters level fine art teaching.

Key Teaching Initiatives

Modeen has been central to the development of interdisciplinary studies in DJCAD, with Humanities and environmental studies. She was the Course Director for Art, Philosophy and Contemporary Practices (now simply Art and Philosophy) for over seven years (2003-2010), developing this unique undergraduate course, liaising with the Humanities faculty, for the first early years through its first five years of graduates. Following this, she designed and developed the interdisciplinary Master of Fine Arts in Art & Humanities, for which she was Course Director, from 2012-2018. She was the Coordinator for PhDs and Research Studies for 8 years, and most recently initiated the Masters by Research in DJCAD (both MDes(by Res) and MFA(by Res)) 2015-2021.

To date, Modeen has eighteen completed PhD students, 5 completed MRes students, as well as the seven current doctoral candidates. She has served as an External Examiner for 18 PhD students across the UK and internationally. Combined with Convening and Internal Examining, she has served on 37 PhD examination panels to date.

2017       Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching at the University of Dundee

2016       DUSA (Dundee Univ. Student Association) Student-Led Teaching Award for Inspirational Teaching

Research Summary:

Modeen’s research focuses primarily on place-based investigations, and the various ways that sitedness grounds our understanding of being in the world, how the environment shapes us and how we exist as co-participant in the world. In conducting this research, she derives from studies in the humanities, particularly philosophy, literature, feminist and indigenous studies and cultural geography. These connect cultural values, history and embodied experience, and sometimes deploy deep mapping methods.

Recent Funded Research Grant:

1 Sept.'20-22 Feb '21, 'The Rural Reimagined: Connecting Irish and Scottish Artists and Writers with Rural Practices and Narratives.' Co-Funded by the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. See: https://www.theruralreimagined.com/about-1

Selected Solo Exhibitions include:

2024          Bog Epiphanies, The Window Gallery, Perth, Scotland. Paintings.

2014          The Absolutely Other, Edinburgh Printmakers Gallery, Edinburgh. Prints, artists' books and constructed prints. With a gallery brochure.

2012-13     Ways in Which the World Takes Shape. Solo large permanent installation within the Min No Aya Win Human Services Center, Fond du Lac Reservation of Chippewa Indians, Cloquet, Minnesota, USA

2007           Te Whenua Maori, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand, with acquisitions for the permanent collection (10 July- Aug)

Two-person exhibitions:

2011           The Enigma of Place, collaborative multi-media installation, with Iain Biggs, for Sensory Worlds: Environment, Value and the Multi-Sensory 7-9th December, in conjunction with the conference Embodied Values: Bringing the Senses Back to the Environment, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

2010-11        Landscapes of Epiphany and Memory, with Dr Judith Tucker, Armory Gallery, Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, Virginia USA.

Recent Selected Group Exhibitions:

2026.  'Circulation', an installation, in Between Stone and Sun, a group exhiibtion, The Old Mill, Dundee, 19-28 June.

2020   Ossuary, a group exhibition curated by Prof Laurie Beth Clark, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, 17 Jan-7 March '20, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

2019-22   *Confluence: Tradition in Contemporary Art, a group exhibition, 9 Oct-7 Dec.’19 George Segal Gallery, Montclair State University, New Jersey. And, 27 Nov-31 Dec,’ 21, Sichuan Fine Art Institute, Chongqing, China. And currently: DJCAD,  27 Oct- 22 Dec. 2022. Also, book publication:

Modeen, M. (Editor and author). Confluence: Tradition in Contemporary Art, Montclair, NJ: Montclair State University, 2019. 72pp. ISBN978-0-578-56913-0.  

2017  In Praise of Wetlands exhibition with Biggs and Baeumler, in association with the CMIT Conference sponsored by ASLE-UKI, Bank Street Art Centre, Sheffield, England; Sept.17. Major installation with printed fabric and sound work, and also an artists book entitled In Praise of Wetlands

Selected Publications include:

Books:

Modeen, M (Ed), Decolonising Place-based Arts Research, (Dec. 2021) DJCAD, University of Dundee, in association with the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Minnesota, and Te Ipukarea Research Institute, Auckland University of Technology.  With additional distribution by Huia Press, With contributions by 16 artist/scholars. (Modeen is Editor and Contributor.) ISBN: 9 78 -1-899837 87 6. Auckland, NZ. 128 pp.

Modeen, Mary & Biggs, Iain. Creative Engagements with Ecologies of Place: Geopoetics, Deep-mapping and Slow Residencies, London: Routledge, 2021. ISBN (hb)978-0-367-54575-8. Monograph. 10 Chapters, 70 Illustrations.

Book Chapters:

‘Ecosophy, Geopoetics, and the Desire to Know’, in Creative Perspectives on Sustainable Nature-Culture Relationships: Beyond the Anthropocenes. Riina Haanpää, Ullrich Kockel, Máiréad Nic Craith and Katriina Siivonen (Eds), London: Routledge, July, 2026. (Word count: 9,775)

          ‘Northern Wetlands and Socially–Engaged, Environmental                       Artists’, in Relate North Number 9, Glen Coutts and Timo                       Jokela, Eds. Publisher: InSEA Publications, 2022. Quinta da                   Cruz, Portugal. (7,883 word count)

Guest editor, Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place and Community, Issue 20, “Rivers as Rivers, Rivers as Meaning,” an online interdisciplinary research e-journal and publication. March ’22,  (delayed launch due to pandemic) (https://editions.lib.umn.edu/openrivers), ISSN: ISSN 2471-190X)

Refereed Journal Papers (published)

•          Modeen, M. ‘Traditional Knowledge of the Sea in a Time of Change: the Caiçaras of Ilhabela, Brazil’ in The Journal of Cultural Geography, Nov. ’20.

•      Modeen and H. Whiting,'Groups of the manners in Scotland': David Allan -- the Process and Politics of Printmaking’, Journal of the Scottish Society of Art Historians, Vol. 22 (2016-17), Nov’17, St. Andrews, Scotland
• Modeen: ‘Breaking the Boundaries of ‘Self’: Representations of Spatial Indeterminacy’, Architecture and Culture Journal, special issue Transgression: Body and Space, Volume 2/Issue 3, November 2014, pp335–358. David Littlefield and Rachel Sara, Eds. ISSN: 2050-7828 Online ISSN: 2050-7836

Recent Residency:

2018         Casa na Ilha, Sao Sebastiao, Brazil

Recent Funded Research Grants:

2021-22    Funded by the Royal Irish Academy/Royal Society of Edinburgh: The Rural Reimagined: Connecting Irish and Scottish Artists and Writers with Rural Practices and Narratives, with Dr Ciara Healy-Musson (Institute of Technology, Carlow, Ireland); Professor Mary Modeen; and Dr Iain Biggs, DJCAD Honorary Research Fellow, as Consultant. The 6-month project included 2 Practica, one in Ireland (12 Nov.'21) and the other in Scotland (4 Oct.'21), and a moderated web-based forum (10 Dec. '21), and a permanent dedicated website, leading to further collaborative projects.

2019-2020     Global Challenge Research Fund, for                           interdisciplinary investigation of traditional artisanal fishermen in Brazil;

Future research aims to continue this trajectory with artwork and publications that examine the ‘invisible’ but important elements in perceptions of site-specific places across the world, and especially to support this work with attention to indigenous knowledge, multiple recovered histories, memory and reprised pasts, partially through a process of ‘deep-mapping’, and reindigenising ecological knowledge to rebalance ecosystems. Essential in this research are the imbricated aspects of perception, interpretation, beliefs, and values as they combine to inform our entangled actions in living mindfully.