LONDON.- Dr Kamini Vellodi will join the Royal College of Art in April 2024 as Head of Programme for MA Painting within the School of Arts & Humanities. The programme embraces painting’s rich material and conceptual history and its potential in the 21st century through shared practices, research, and a collaborative culture engaging with current global issues.

Dr Samantha Moore has been appointed as Head of Programme for MA Animation within the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art. The programme cultivates critical thinking to examine social and cultural issues by embracing experimentation and creativity, and is renowned for its artistic excellence, director-led approach and innovative risk-taking.

Dr Kamini Vellodi joins the RCA from Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, where she is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Theory and History of Art, and Director of Research. An alumnus of the RCA Painting programme, she completed her PhD in Philosophy from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, in 2012.

Kamini researches and publishes extensively in the fields of modern and contemporary European philosophy and critical theory, philosophies of art, theories and critical historiographies of art history, contemporary visual arts and theories of the image. Recent books include ‘Tintoretto’s Difference: Deleuze, Diagrammatics and Art History’ (Bloomsbury, 2019), and ‘Grey on Grey. At the Threshold of Philosophy and Art’ (Edinburgh University Press 2023), and she is Series Editor of ‘Refractions. At the Borders of Art History and Philosophy’ (Edinburgh University Press).

Kamini has held senior academic roles and taught widely across departments of fine art practice, art history, visual culture and philosophy, nationally and internationally, and has been a visiting fellow/faculty at universities around the world including the University of California at Berkeley and Parsons School of Design.

Her work across teaching, research and leadership brings together a commitment to the interfaces of theory, history, and practice, to painting as a mode of thinking and to nurturing practice research cultures.

Formerly Senior Tutor (Research) in Animation at the Royal College of Art since 2021, Dr Samantha Moore is an animator and researcher with an interest in documentary, science, and practice as research.

Samantha’s research and practice use animation to document the invisible, particularly in scientific arenas. Samantha's PhD explored how animation can document perceptual brain states, with a collaboratively ethnographic methodology.Cross-disciplinary collaborative practice is vital to her work, and she has worked with a diverse cohort of peers including micro-biologists, neuro-psychologists, multiple birth medical professionals, textile artisans, and archaeologists. Samantha is passionate about the correlation between practice and research in animation with an interest in all aspects of expanded animation, from cinema-based features and independent short films, through music videos, to interstitials, installation work, VR/AR, games, medical imaging and data visualisation. Samantha directed the short animated documentary ‘Visible Mending’ about emotional repair through wool, which has been longlisted for the British Short Animation award for the 2024 EE BAFTA Film Awards.

In addition to her role at the RCA, she is an Associate Professor in Animation at University College Volda, Norway, and co-editor of Animation Practice, Process & Production, Intellect Press Journal, with Dr Miriam Harris (Auckland University of Technology).