My academic career has spanned 30 years of working within Higher Education. I am Professor of Art and the Public Sphere and the research centre director for the Centre for Postdigital Culture, Coventry University. Previously I established and run the MA Contemporary Art Practice Programme at the Royal College of Art from 2014- 2020. 

My research and artistic practice interrogate the intersections of art, politics, and publics, with particular attention to the ideological conditions that shape participatory and socially engaged practices. As the founding editor of Art & the Public Sphere (est. 2009), I have played a significant role in advancing debates around the political function of art and its capacity for public knowledge production. The journal has provided a vital platform for artists to publish their writing and has contributed to the recognition of artistic practice as a legitimate and rigorous form of research. I have led major collaborative research initiatives that connect academic and cultural partners through a clear conceptual vision. I originated and co-lead the Marie Skłodowska-Curie, Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) project spacex: Spatial Practices in Art and Architecture for Empathetic Exchange (Jan 2020–Dec 2025), the largest funded arts and humanities RISE project to date. From its inception, I developed the project’s core intellectual and methodological framework and shaped its structure, research agenda, and cross-sector model. The project brings together 84 researchers across 13 HEIs and 16 cultural organisations through secondments between academia and the cultural sector. spacex introduces frameworks for empathetic, care-led collaboration across institutions and geographies, approaches grounded in my own research and closely aligned with the relational concerns of postdigital intimacies (Evans). Having developed and implemented spacex, I bring practical insight into the building and sustaining collaborative structures and I am well placed to work with partners and artists to co-develop new methodologies and infrastructures.

I have published widely on contemporary art and its publics, with contributions to Third Text, Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture, the European Journal of Media Studies, and the Journal of Visual Culture. My work consistently foregrounds the ethical, political, and epistemological dimensions of collaborative and public-facing art practices. This is particularly evident in the co-authored article with Dave Beech, Toppling Statues, Affective Publics and the Lessons of the Black Lives Matter Movement, which explores how protest and cultural iconoclasm reshape our understanding of public space and democratic expression. Drawing on Zizi Papacharissi’s concept of “affective publics,” the article considers how the online and offline actions of the BLM movement, especially the toppling of statues, animate social media as a site of political agency and contestation. We argue that these affective modes of participation surpass the limits of the bourgeois public sphere, offering a compelling model for rethinking what a public sphere might be and who it is for. My recent artworks with the Andrew Hewitt, Partisan Social Club such as Talk to the Land and Collective Nouns II (both developed as part of the spacex project) exemplify Jordan’s ongoing commitment to 'rewriting' as a method of resistance and public engagement. These projects use manifestos, audiovisual language, and archival recontextualisation to explore the affective dimensions of democratic life, drawing on thinkers such as Martha Harnecker and Donna Haraway to forge new aesthetic forms of collective subjectivity. 

Academic Position

Professor of Art & the Public Sphere, Reserach Director, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University. 

2023 - 2025: Professor of Art & the Public Sphere, Acting Research Director, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University

2020 – 2023; Professor of Art & the Public Sphere, Centre for Postdigital Culture, Coventry University

2017– 2020; Head of Programme Contemporary Art Practice, Reader in Art & the Public Sphere, Royal College of Art, Budget holder, line management 8 staff members, overseeing of Contemporary Art Practice Programme

2017 - 2018 Head of Programme Contemporary Art Practice & Sculpture, Reader in Art & the Public Sphere, Royal College of Art, Budget holder for two programmes , line management 16 staff members, overseeing of Contemporary Art Practice & Sculpture

2013 – 2016: (0.6) Senior Tutor in Sculpture, Reader in Art & the Public Sphere, Royal College of Art.

2007 – 2013: Senior Lecturer Loughborough University, Reader in Art & the Public Sphere, Research Co-ordinator/ Lead REF submission for Art & Design, Taught BA Fine Art, Dissertations, PhD supervisor for 8 Students.

2000- 2007: (0.5) Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, University of Wolverhampton, taught BA Fine Art as Social Practice, Painting & Sculpture.

2005 – 2007: (0.2) Lecturer in Art, Goldsmiths College of Art, Tutorials and teaching BA Art.

Visiting tutor at numerous art schools including Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, Malmo Academy of Art, Malmo, University of the Arts, Middlesex, Chelsea College of Art, Goldsmiths College of Art (BA & PhD), Academy of Arts Helsinki and Glasgow School of Art. I recently delivered a lecture How to carry on: ways of doing and enduring in the practice of the Freee Art Collective and the Partisan Social Club, 18 Feb 2020,Chelsea School of Art, University of the Arts, London

PhD Completions

I have supported 17 PhDs to completion, 12 of which were practice-based. I have externally exmained 6 PhDs.