Emma C. Roberts is a Ph.D. student in Film & Media Studies and the History of Art & Architecture. Her research explores the reciprocal relationship between artistic and psychotherapeutic institutions. By contextualizing and critiquing contemporaneous developments in group psychotherapy and collaborative cultural practice from the mid-twentieth century until the present, her work explores how artists have drawn upon postwar therapeutic modalities to advance unorthodox models of artistic authorship.
Her research interests include contemporary art, participatory practices, histories of collaboration, institutional critique, nontheatrical film, the sociology of art, and alternative pedagogies in art practice.
Selected Presentations
“Who’s in Charge?: Group Work and Collaborative Cultural Practice.” Presented at London Study Day, Kings College London, May 2025.
“Smoothing Off the Rough Corners: In the Company of Men and the Interracial Encounter.” Presented at Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Chicago, April 2025
“There-and-Then: Watching Leigh Ledare’s The Task.” Paper presented at Annual Critical Studies Symposium, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, June 2022.
- Ph.D., Film & Media Studies with a concentration in the History of Art & Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, in progress
- Gestalt Training Program for Professionals, The Gestalt Institute of Pittsburgh, in progress
- Whitney Independent Study Program, Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies Fellow, 2021-22
- B.A., Art History, minor in Screen Studies, Temple University, 2019
Education & Training
- David Wilkins Graduate Student Research Fund, 2025
- Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences Summer Research Grant, 2024; 2025
- Jeffrey and Sandra Lyons Canadian Film Scholarship, Film Reference Library, Toronto International Film Festival, 2024
