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❖ Julian Chehirian
◀CV

CV

Academic appointments

  • 2027– Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Excellence Postdoctoral Fellows Program (REPFP), Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto (incoming, January 2027)
  • 2026 Postdoctoral Fellow, Science History Institute, Philadelphia, PA (September–December 2026)

Residencies & affiliations

  • 2026 Visual Arts Resident, Pioneer Works, New York City
  • 2026 Faculty, The Strother School of Radical Attention, New York City

Education

  • 2025 Ph.D., History of Science. Department of History, Princeton University. Dissertation: The Clinical Studio: Art, Attention, and the Mind Sciences. Supervised by Professor D. Graham Burnett and Professor Katja Guenther.
  • 2021 M.A. in History, Princeton University
  • 2013 B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies, American University

Scholarships & awards

  • 2023 Award, City of Toronto Heritage Foundation, for The Neighbours
  • 2022 Graduate Fellow, Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities, Princeton University
  • 2021 Graduate Fellow, The Center for Digital Humanities, Princeton University
  • 2019 Visiting Researcher, American Research Center in Sofia, Bulgaria
  • 2014 Fulbright Researcher, New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria

Publications

Books

  • The End of Research: Art, Inquiry, and the Future of Study (with D. Graham Burnett, in progress)

Articles and chapters

  • "The Clinical Studio." In Art & Psychotherapy, edited by Sarah Marks, Sasha Bergstrom-Katz, and Suzanne Hudson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Forthcoming)
  • "Teaching the Unconscious: Margaret Naumburg, Objects, and the Attention of Art Therapy." In Modernism, Art, Therapy, edited by Suzanne Hudson and Tanya Sheehan. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024.
  • "Attention, Art and Psychotherapeutics." In Scenes of Attention: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry, edited by D. Graham Burnett and Justin H. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press, 2023.
  • "Work and Therapy: Two Visions of the Bulgarian New Man." In Technologies of Mind and Body in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, edited by Anna Toropova and Claire Shaw. London: Bloomsbury, 2023.
  • "Excavating the Psyche: A Social History of Soviet Psychiatry in Bulgaria." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 42, no. 2 (June 2018): 449–80. doi:10.1007/s11013-017-9559-2

Public writing

  • "Archives of Latency." In The Neighbours — Catalogue of the Bulgarian Pavilion, 60th Venice Art Biennale. National Gallery of Art, Bulgaria, 2024.
  • "Last Pole." The Public Domain Review, May 27, 2020.

Exhibitions

  • 2024 The Neighbours, Bulgarian Pavilion, 60th Venice Art Biennale. With Krasimira Butseva and Lilia Topouzova, curated by Vasil Vladimirov. Supported by the Department of History at Princeton University, Princeton Humanities Council, Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, University of Toronto, Akademie Schloss Solitude, and the Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria.
  • 2024 Acqua Alta: The History of the Participation of Bulgaria in the Venice Biennale, 1910–2024. Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Curated by Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva and Plamen Petrov.
  • 2023 Rafi Chehirian: American Haze. Fleisher Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia.
  • 2023 Latent Archives, IHUM Salon. Princeton University.
  • 2023 The Neighbours: Forms of Trauma. University of Toronto, Ontario.
  • 2023 Beyond All Reason: In the Mirror of Surreal Times. Structura Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria. Curated by Gregor Jansen.
  • 2022 The Neighbours: Memory and Silence after the Bulgarian Gulag. Sofia City Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria. Curated by Krasimir Iliev (Sofia City Gallery) and Vessela Nozhareva (Studio The Neighbours).
  • 2017 Rafi's Traces: The American Visions. Rhizome, Washington, D.C.
  • 2015 Excavating the Psyche: A Social History of Psychiatry in the People's Republic of Bulgaria. Red House Center for Culture and Debate, Sofia, Bulgaria.

Reviews and media coverage

The Guardian (Laura Cumming); The Guardian (Kate Connolly); Frieze Magazine; Financial Times; Artforum; ArtReview; The Art Newspaper; Apollo Magazine; Gallerie Magazine; Falstaff; Journal for Social Vision; Vizh Magazine; Bulgarian National TV; Bulgarian National Radio; Radio Free Europe; Capital Magazine; Kultura (essay and review). Full press archive.

Invited lectures & presentations

  • 2025 "Attention as Medium: From Psychoanalysis to Psychodynamic Art." Pitzer College.
  • 2025 "Modernism, Art, Therapy." With Suzanne Hudson, Tanya Sheehan, and Cris Scorza (Helena Rubinstein Chair of Education). Whitney Museum, New York City.
  • 2025 "On Diasporic Aesthetics." The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
  • 2024 "New Media and the Archive." Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore.
  • 2024 "The Psychotherapeutic Museum: Political Violence, Memory and Remediation." Richardson Seminar on the History of Psychiatry, DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry, New York City.
  • 2024 International programme of talks for the Bulgarian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale (March–August 2024): Swimming Pool, Sofia (July 2024); Diffrakt Zentrum für Theoretische Peripherie, Berlin (July 2024); Cell Project Space, London (July 2024, sound performance and lecture); Buna Festival, Varna City Gallery (June 2024); Bulgarian Pavilion, Venice (May 2024); University of Regensburg (May 2024); Cultural Centre of Sofia University (March 2024).
  • 2023 "Rafi Chehirian: American Haze." In conversation with Alex Baker. Fleisher/Ollman Gallery.
  • 2023 "Moving Through Sound." In conversation with Krasimira Butseva, Lilia Topouzova, and Rohan Kulkarni on The Neighbours. University of Toronto.
  • 2022 "What Is Attention?" Honors College Seminar. College of Mount Saint Vincent, New York City.
  • 2022 Artist Talk. In conversation with Krasimira Butseva. Studio The Neighbours.
  • 2019 Talk and screening of the Excavating the Psyche exhibition documentary. Technologies of Mind and Body in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe International Symposium, University of Nottingham.
  • 2015 "Psychiatry in the People's Republic of Bulgaria." Red House, Sofia.
  • 2015 "The Body Speaks: Psychiatry in the People's Republic of Bulgaria." CAS Visiting Lecturer Series, Center for Advanced Study, Sofia.
  • 2015 "The Body Speaks: Psychiatric Materialism and the Subject in Communist Bulgaria." American Research Center Sofia.
  • 2015 "Reduced to Bodies: Psychiatric Practice and Ideologies of Abnormality in Communist Bulgaria." AUBG Talks Series, American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad.

Conference presentations

  • 2026 History of Science Society / ESHS Joint Meeting. Edinburgh, Scotland. Panel: When Scientific Images Go Rogue: Popularization, Pluralization, and Contestation.
  • 2025 Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Washington, D.C. Panel: Unsilencing: The History and Legacy of the Bulgarian Gulag (2025) by Lilia Topouzova.
  • 2024 Art Therapy Workshop. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
  • 2023 Authoritarianism: Lives, Legacies, Traumas. CEES, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. Panel: Visual and Artistic Representations.
  • 2022 Art and Psychotherapy: A Critical Workshop. Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health, Birkbeck, University of London. Panel: Studying Creativity.
  • 2021 ICCEES — 10th World Congress. Concordia University, Montreal. Panel: Staging Oral History: The Unseeable, the Unheard and the Imagined.
  • 2019 Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine. Harvard University. Panel: State of Mind: The Spaces of Mental Health.
  • 2018 Soyuz Annual Symposium. Yale University. Panel: Ritual & Care.
  • 2016 ASEEES Annual Conference. Washington, D.C. Panel: Echoes of Bulgarian Communism.
  • 2016 RATS (Radical Ontologies for the Contemporary Past) Conference. Binghamton University.
  • 2015 AAA Annual Meeting. Denver. Panel: The Politics of Health in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe.

Teaching experience

  • 2026 Instructor of Record, Speculative Psychotechnics. The Strother School of Radical Attention, New York City.
  • 2025 Teaching Assistant, Department of History, Princeton University. HIS-288, Attention & Modernity: Mind, Media, and the Senses, 1500–2050. Professor D. Graham Burnett.
  • 2024 Instructor, Educational Programme, National Pavilion of Bulgaria, 60th Venice Biennale.
  • 2023 Instructor, weeklong seminar for The Neighbours: Forms of Trauma (1945–1989). Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Munk School, University of Toronto.
  • 2022 Instructor, three-week seminar for The Neighbours: Forms of Trauma (1945–1989). Sofia City Gallery and Studio The Neighbours, Sofia.
  • 2019 Workshop Instructor, Summer History Program, Sofia Platform. Belene, Bulgaria.

Languages

English (fluent) · Bulgarian (fluent) · French (reading) · Russian (reading)

Professional associations

The History of Science Society (HSS) · The American Historical Association (AHA) · The Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)