Dani Child

Dani's research focuses on creative labour. In her research, she adopts an historical materialist approach to explore the relationship between contemporary art and capitalism through the lens of labour. This interest includes social (collective, participatory and public) artistic practices, contracted labour (the ‘invisible hands’ of production) in art, and contemporary art and social class.

She has published articles in Oxford Art Journal, Third Text, Art & the Public Sphere and Sculpture Journal. More broadly, she has contributed to publications such as Red Pepper, Elephant and has been an invited speaker on podcasts and radio, including the BBC Radio 4 series Taxi Drivers, hosted by Scottee.

Her monograph Working Aesthetics: Labour, Art and Capitalism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) examines the moments where art and labour intersect under capitalism, with an emphasis on the neoliberal period. Case studies include: Lippincott Inc., Mike Smith Studio, Thomas Hirschhorn's monuments, Rimini Protokoll's Call Cutta in a Box (2008-2012), Liberate Tate and etoy [sic].

In 2020-22, Dani was a Co-Investigator on the AHRC funded project: 'COVID-19: Impacts on the cultural industries and the implications for policy'. https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/our-work/covid-19-research-project/

From 2020-2024, she was an Affiliated Researcher on the joint Brazil/UK project funded by the AHRC and FAPESP: Translating Ferro/Transforming Knowledges of Production
https://www.tf-tk.com for which she developed a case study on contracted labour in contemporary art making. She presented research in progress in Sao Paulo, Brazil in April 2023 and co-convened a panel at the 2024 Production Studies Conference in Newcastle (March 2024). Her chapter is forthcoming in the project's anthology Building Sites, Routledge. 

Dani is currently co-Lead (with Dave Beech) on the AHRC-funded Mapping Creative Labour in Contemporary Art network (2023-2024).

She is co-host (with Sarah Scarsbrook) of the podcast Classed Acts, which engages conversations on working class experiences in creative higher education and the creative industries. 

She is currently working, as editor, on The Routledge Companion to Art and Capitalism.