Dr Cecilia Järdemar is a Swedish-Madeiran artist and practice-led researcher whose work spans photography, moving image, and critical archival studies. She joined the Australian National University in 2024 as Senior Lecturer in Photography and Media Arts. Prior to her appointment at ANU, she was Senior Lecturer in Photography and Moving Image at Konstfack University of Arts, Craft and Design in Stockholm, Sweden, (2018–2024), where she also served as Research Leader for Fine Art. She has held artist-in-residence positions and  guest lectured at institutions including Linnaeus University, the Royal College of Art (UK), The Royal Academy of Arts, Stockholm, Umeå University and the London College of Communication.

Her artistic work has been exhibited internationally at the National Museum of the DRC, Kalmar Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery (London), and Jönköpings Länsmuseum (Sweden), and is held in major public collections. Her monograph The Opening (2019) received the Swedish Book Arts Award and and a new monograph, Sukali na Mungua, will be published by Art & Theory in 2026.  

Dr Järdemar has led and co-led large-scale interdisciplinary research projects funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), the Swedish Research Council, the Nordic Culture Fund,  the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Culture fund. She has served as Deputy Chair of the Swedish Research Council's Committee for Artistic Research and currently serves as Deputy Chair of the Research Committee at the ANU School of Art & Design.

Dr Järdemar’s research explores how artistic practice can intervene in the politics of memory, visual culture, and historiography. Drawing on decolonial theory, archival studies, and participatory methodologies, she investigates how photography and moving image can challenge dominant historical narratives and create space for alternative, often marginalised, forms of knowledge. Her work focuses particularly on the legacies of colonial photographic archives, with an emphasis on ethical stewardship, collaborative knowledge production, and cross-cultural exchange.

Järdemar works across academic and artistic disciplines, engaging with communities, institutions, and collections in both the Global North and South. Her practice-led research is iterative and site-responsive, often situated within long-term partnerships that span museums, universities, and grassroots organisations. She is especially interested in how artistic processes can contribute to institutional change, restitution dialogues, and the transformation of archival power structures.

Her recent projects extend this inquiry into the realm of human-computer interaction and digital heritage, exploring how augmented reality, participatory annotation, and experimental exhibition formats can create more inclusive and reparative forms of engagement with colonial-era collections. Working collaboratively with HCI researchers, she investigates how digital tools might support decolonial visual practices, while critically examining the limits of technological mediation in intercultural contexts.

Through this work, Järdemar contributes to the development of praxiological artistic research as a critical and socially engaged field, advancing new models for how art can interrogate and transform historical knowledge within and beyond institutional frameworks.

PhD, Fine Art Photography,  Royal College of Arts, UK, 2016, MA, Fine Art Photography,  Royal College of Arts, 2005, First Class BA (Hons) Photography, Falmouth College of Arts, 2000