About Mark Crinson
Mark Crinson is a historian of art and architecture who, after spending a career in academia, now works as an independent researcher and lecturer.
He studied for a BA at Sussex University and took an MA at the Courtauld Institute while teaching in adult education. He then lived for three years in the USA researching for a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, funded initially by a Thouron Scholarship. Short term work followed at the Open University (summer schools), Loughborough College of Art, and then the University of Essex where he had a two-year post as postdoctoral researcher.
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In 1992 he was appointed Lecturer in the history of art department at Manchester University where he worked for the next twenty-three years. He was Head of the School of Art History and Archaeology for four years and was promoted to a chair in 2007. In 2016 he was appointed Professor of Architectural History at Birkbeck (University of London), where he remained until 2023. In that time, he acted as Associate Dean in the School of Arts, and helped to guide three units of assessment to their best outcomes in the REF. He directed the Architecture Space and Society Centre (including organising two international conferences) and launched a new MA in Architectural History.
Across his career at Manchester and Birkbeck, Crinson has supervised 25 PhD students to completion, and he continues to supervise four PhDs at Birkbeck.
He has worked as external examiner at many universities, including Trinity College and University College Dublin, the American College in Greece, as well as universities across the UK.
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Crinson was Vice-President then President of the European Architectural History Network (EAHN) from 2016 to 2020. He has lectured across Europe, North America, Australia and Singapore. He will be teaching on the Yale in London programme in 2026, and he currently acts as a panel member for the Swiss National Science Foundation. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2023.