Christopher Williams-Wynn, Ph.D.

Christopher Williams-Wynn is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the interdisciplinary programme 4A Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics (September 2023–June 2025). He is a historian of modern and contemporary art. His research investigates how media have been used to explore, and challenge, the aesthetic implications, epistemological claims, and political consequences of disciplinary knowledge and practice. His current book project examines how artists and critics reckoned with the dominance of "systems thinking"—associated primarily with cybernetics, information theory and systems theory—under various socio-political conditions during the late 1960s and 1970s. Previous writing on the politics of the avant-garde, digital media in South Africa, and contemporary photography has appeared in Modernism/modernity, Third Text, and Photography and Culture. In 2023, he received his PhD in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University. His research has been supported by, among other institutions, the DAAD, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the Center for European Studies, the Krupp Foundation, and the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art.