Barbara Bickel is an artist, researcher, educator and independent curator. An Assistant Professor in Art Education and Women Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Bickel currently teaches courses in art education and studio art. Her arts-based Ph.D. in Art Education from The University of British Columbia, Canada focused on women, ritual, spiritual leadership, collaboration, and restorative and transformative learning. It was awarded the Arts Based Educational Research Outstanding Dissertation Award from the American Educational Research Association (ABER SIG) in 2009. Her MA in Education at UBC, inquired into the body as a site of knowing -- performing itself as text, and was awarded the ABER Thesis Award in 2005. She holds a BFA in Painting from the University of Calgary and a BA in Sociology and Art History from the University of Alberta. Go to this link for full Curriculum Vitae!

Her art and performance rituals have been exhibited and performed in Canada since 1991. Her articles on arts-based inquiry and a/r/tography have been published in numerous journals and book chapters. She co-founded The Centre Gallery (1995-2001), a non-profit women’s focused gallery in Calgary, Alberta. Performance rituals have accompanied many of her exhibitions since 1995. In 2002 she began video documenting her performance rituals and creating video art narratives. Since 1992, she has worked with the collaborative process in her powerful figurative art with women, children and men. Not satisfied with the traditional artist/model relationship she has evolved an art-making process, which incorporates the models as co-creators.