Dena Bagi

Lecturer in Curating and Exchanges Coordinator

Dena is a pedagogical designer, who explores the wellbeing benefits of manipulating clay in a gallery setting. Before working in an academic context, Dena led health-based pedagogical programming in the gallery sector. She has led programmes at Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester Museum, and the British Ceramics Biennial (Stoke).

Dena’s AHRC-funded PhD, which she will complete in 2025 and is based at the University of Sunderland, aims to understand the specific impact of clay-working on mental health recovery. The social, cathartic, and perceptive ‘power’ of the material are of particular interest.

Dena has taught at undergraduate and postgraduate-level at Manchester School of Art for five years, in and around the area of curation and social curation/gallery-based engagement in the arts.

Her work is governed by methodologies that encourage a ‘collective’ learning design process, with strong beliefs in the value of co-authorship in participatory/pedagogical happenings in the arts; these beliefs are core elements of her teaching philosophy.