Our adjudicators
Adjudicators judge the Articulation Prize presentations.
Previous adjudicators have included museum directors, curators, art historians, journalists, authors and artists such as Jacqueline Donachie, Tony Heaton OBE, Humphrey Ocean, and Hetain Patel amongst many others.
Contact us
If you would like to get involved, please get in touch with the Articulation team.
Email: articulation@nationalgallery.org.uk
Instagram: @articulationprize
2026 adjudicators
Meet the panel of adjudicators who will judge the 2026 Articulation Prize:
Verity Babbs
Verity Babbs is an art historian, presenter, and comedian. She is the author of 'The History of Art in One Sentence' which was published by Bloomsbury in October 2025, and has written for the Guardian, RA Magazine, and Artnet News. She has worked on filmed projects for Tate, London Art Fair, and the British Museum, and is the host of art-themed comedy nights Art Laughs which regularly perform at the National Gallery. She was named one of BBC HistoryExtra's '30 Under 30' in 2024. She took part in Articulation in 2015.
Alice Bhandhukravi
Alice is a journalist with nearly 20 years’ experience at the BBC in one of the UK’s busiest newsrooms. Of British and Thai heritage, she brings a distinct perspective, spotlighting stories that reflect the full range of London’s cultural life. Her work spans human-interest stories and cultural reporting, consistently championing underrepresented voices and addressing questions of identity and discrimination. She has reported across television, radio and digital platforms with her journalism recognised for its insight and ability to connect audiences with the people and places shaping the capital.
Alex Bispham
Alex Bispham is a technical art historian and doctoral researcher at The Courtauld Institute of Art. Working on alternative spirituality, she is seeking to define a queer theory of materials. She examines spiritual and artistic practices that disrupt perceived hierarchies of matter/idea, reason/emotion, and high/low art. Alex previously held positions at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and Hôtel Drouot.
Dr Edwin Coomasaru
Dr Edwin Coomasaru is a historian of modern and contemporary British, Irish, and Sri Lankan art. He is currently writing a book on Queer Ecologies and Abundant Aesthetics in Sri Lankan Art, 1926-2024. Coomasaru is a Mid-Career Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Visiting Fellow at UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies, Reviews Editor for Visual Culture in Britain journal, and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Bristol. Coomasaru has written for Art History, Third Text, Oxford Art Journal, The Irish Review, Irish Studies Review; as well as numerous edited books, exhibition catalogues, and art criticism.
Dr Alice Correia
Dr Alice Correia is an independent curator and art historian specialising in late 20th-century British art, with a focus on artists of African, Caribbean, and South Asian heritage. She has worked with Tate Britain, Government Art Collection, and universities including Sussex and Manchester. A former Research Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre and UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute, she co-curated A Tall Order! (2023) and chairs the journal Third Text. Her writing appears in Art History, British Art Studies, Nka, and more. In 2022, she edited What is Black Art? Writings on artists of African, Asian and Caribbean Heritage in Britain, 1981-1989, (Penguin Classics). She is currently writing a book provisionally titled South Asian Women Artists in Britain.
Kathryn Davies
Kathryn Davies is an art historian pursuing a PhD in early modern Flemish print culture at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her research considers the hybrid, posthumanist body in art in relation to social and political upheaval, a topic on which she has spoken in the UK and internationally. She works as a Print Room Assistant at The Courtauld Gallery and teaches on the Young People’s Programme at The Courtauld Institute.
Rachel Dedman
Rachel Dedman is the Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East at the V&A, London, where she curates the triennial Jameel Prize and the Jameel Fellowship artist residency programme. Recent exhibitions include Embroidering Palestine, MoMu, Antwerp, 2025; Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine, 2025, at V&A Dundee and Hayy Jameel; Jameel Prize: Moving Images, 2024, V&A; and Ties that Bind: The State of Fashion Biennial 2024 (The Netherlands, Brazil, India, and Kenya). Between 2013 and 2019, Dedman was an independent curator based in Beirut, curating projects across the region. She is the author of three books on the political histories of Palestinian dress, and holds degrees in the History of Art from St John’s College, Oxford and Harvard University.
Oliver Garland
Oliver Garland is a London based architect currently working with Coles Conservation Architects. He holds a first-class degree in Architecture from Central Saint Martins and is presently completing his master’s degree. Oliver has delivered a series of lectures at the National Gallery on the works of Canaletto and Pieter de Hooch to both Members and Patrons. He has also collaborated on a social media series with London Art Studies and created a short film with HENI Talks. Oliver took part in the ARTiculation Prize in 2019 as a Grand Finalist.
Remi Graves
Remi Graves is a poet and drummer. A former Barbican Young Poet, their work has been commissioned by St Paul's Cathedral, Barbican and BBC Radio 4. They have performed at Tate, Cheltenham Literature festival and more. Remi has led courses at The Poetry School and facilitates in schools and community spaces across London and the South East. Remi’s debut pamphlet with your chest (2022) was published by fourteen poems. Remi is the winner of 2024 Prototype Prize (short form category), their book coal was published by Monitor Books in 2025.
Dr Jack Hartnell
Jack Hartnell is Head of Research at the National Gallery, London. He is an art historian and curator with a particular specialism in the cross-continental visual culture of medieval and early modern science, examining the artistic materials of medicine, cartography, and mathematics, most recently with an emphasis on Jewish art and culture from the period.
Justin P. Hopper
Justin P. Hopper is a US-born British writer and performer whose work explores connections between language and landscape. This work takes form as books (The Old Weird Albion, Dead The Long Year) and records (Chanctonbury Rings, The Path) as well as sound walks, audio installations and live performances (at venues including the National Gallery, Barbican, SPILL Festival, Enable US Festival and more). His podcast Uncanny Landscapes offers extended interviews with contemporary artists, writers and musicians. He lives in East Anglia.
Dr Gayle Chong Kwan
Dr Gayle Chong Kwan (b. Edinburgh) is an award-winning British artist who works internationally at the intersection of historical, material and archival research and fine art practice. She explores complex, sensory, and unacknowledged histories, colonial and diasporic legacies, collections, and ecological degradation through expansive and embodied photography, installation, video, performance, ritual, mixed reality, and work in the public realm. Recent exhibitions include: Oneiric Archaeologies (2025), UNESCO World Heritage Site; I am the Thames and the Thames is Me (2024), Science Gallery London; A Pocket Full of Sand (2024) John Hansard Gallery; The Taotie (2024) Compton Verney.
Alastair and Fleur Mackie
Alastair and Fleur Mackie are a British French-Cameroonian artist duo based in Cornwall. Working collaboratively, they create sculptural and photographic works rooted in the conditions of place and time. Their practice explores material histories and the interplay between ecology and human culture. They have exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including at the Busan Museum of Modern Art and the Reykjavik Art Museum, and their work is held in public collections such as the Wellcome Collection, London, and The Eres Foundation, Munich.
Dr Nick Makoha
Dr Nick Makoha is a Ugandan poet and playwright based in London, and the founder of Obsidian Foundation. His new collection, The New Carthaginians (Penguin, 2025), was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. He is the winner of the 2021 Ivan Juritz Prize and the Poetry London Prize. His debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity (2017), was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and named one of The Guardian’s best books of the year. His work has appeared in Poetry, The New York Times, Poetry Review, Boston Review, Callaloo, and many others. He is a Fellow of the RSL.
Liliana Muñoz Flannery
Born in Leeds, Liliana Muñoz Flannery is a Manchester-based writer and creative. With a background in anthropology, her fascination with the human condition greatly informs her work, which often focuses on the emotive elements of art, exploring what drives people to create and discussing the deep intimacy of this form of expression. Her writing on art and culture has been published in several magazines, such as Tank, New Wave, and Boot, with her practice often involving working in collaboration with other artists and writers in the North’s thriving creative scene. Liliana is an Articulation Alumni.
Professor Jennifer Powell
Professor Jennifer Powell is Director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, and Barber Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham. Prior to this, she was Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge. She is a respected scholar in the field of modern and contemporary art, especially sculpture and exhibition cultures since 1945, an area in which she has published widely. Jennifer begun her curatorial career with the V&A before taking up the post of Assistant Curator of Modern British Art at Tate Britain in 2010. She was appointed Head of Collections, Programme and Research at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, in 2013, and played a key role in the gallery’s major capital extension project.
Jon Sleigh
Jon Sleigh is a freelance educator and art history writer. He works nationally as a specialist in fine art engagement with a diverse portfolio of arts institutions, museums and heritage sites across the UK. Clients include the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, The National Archives, Historic Royal Palaces, Art Fund and the V&A. Prior to this, Jon worked for Birmingham Museums Trust / The Arts Collection in Round One of the acclaimed ACE National Partners Programme. Jon’s first book, What Are Museums For?, was published by Bristol University Press in 2024. He has a passion for challenging and underrepresented narratives in art, encouraging communities to bring their own lived experiences to artworks.
Ali Smith
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of several novels and short story collections including, The Accidental, Hotel World, How to Be Both and the Seasonal Quartet. Her works have been translated into more than forty languages. She has been four times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has won the Goldsmiths Prize, Orwell Prize, Costa Best Novel Award and the Women’s Prize.
Dr George Vasey
Dr. George Vasey is a curator and writer who has curated over 50 exhibitions across academic, public, and commercial sectors. Recent projects have explored themes such as happiness, illness, care, and the politics of air, with a strong emphasis on accessibility and inclusion. He views curating as a form of interdisciplinary storytelling and supports artists in making ambitious new work that connects to wider cultural and political contexts. George has led major projects including the Turner Prize and worked with institutions such as Tate, Wellcome Collection, BALTIC, Intoart, and Leeds Art Gallery. His writing is widely published in books, journals, and art magazines. He is Co-Chair of New Contemporaries (Trustee, 2017–), a member of AICA-UK, the International Association of Art Critics and Senior Lecturer in Curating at Teesside University, Middlesbrough.
Dr Francesco Ventrella
Francesco Ventrella is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Sussex, where he is also affiliated with the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence. He is interested in the history of art writing, gender, sexuality and the relationship between art, feelings and emotions. Francesco’s research has been published in Art History, Studi Culturali, British Art Studies and European Journal of Women’s Studies. He has the co-edited a special issue of Visual Resources on Women and the Culture of Connoisseurship (2017), and with Giovanna Zapperi he has published the volume Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy: The Legacy of Carla Lonzi (Bloomsbury, 2020).
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