Ele Carpenter is a curator and Professor of Interdisciplinary Art and Culture, and Director of the UmArts Research Centre at Umeå University.
Dr Ele Carpenter is a research-based curator of interdisciplinary politicised art, with over 25 years curatorial experience in public museums, artist run spaces, research networks and academia. In 2021 Ele Carpenter was appointed as Professor of Interdisciplinary Art & Culture at Umeå School of Architecture, and Director of the new UmArts Research Centre in partnership with Bildmuseet. She leads a vibrant interdisciplinary artistic research program across five departments including postdoctoral research fellow, small visionary projects and a range of working groups. In 2024 UmArts hosted the 'Hurricanes and Scaffolding' Swedish Research Council Symposium on Artistic Research focusing on art as a critical research method.
Ele Carpenter’s curatorial research investigates nuclear culture and aesthetics through commissioning new artwork, curating exhibitions, writing, and roundtable discussions in partnership with arts organisations and nuclear agencies. She is curator of the Nuclear Culture Research Group, and participates in NEA/OECD working groups on how to embed knowledge of geologic repositories within culture for future generations. She is editor of The Nuclear Culture Source Book (2016), and curator of Splitting the Atom, CAC Vlinius, Lithuania, (2020), and Perpetual Uncertainty at: Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden; Z33, Belgium and Malmo Konstmuseum (2016-18).
In 2024-25 Ele Carpenter is leading the Nuclear Culture Deep Geologic Repository Exploratory Workshop in Finland and Sweden funded by Vetenskapsrådet. She is currently writing a book on Planetary Nuclear Aesthetics, which was supported by an RJ Sabbatical Fund in 2024.
Ele Carpenter mentors UmArts post-doctoral interdisciplinary research fellows; and is co-supervisor for Erich Berger's doctoral research in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oulu, Finland. Ele regularly lectures in art and nuclear culture, and in 2024 she was a keynote for the Nuclear Natures PhD Autumn School organised by Professor Anna Storm at Linköping University, Sweden. She regularly examines doctoral research across the arts and humanities including practice-based research in the arts.