Rate My Professor David Bell

Emeritus Professor David Bell is affiliated with the College of Education at the University of Otago on the Dunedin Campus. He holds a BA, PGDip(Arts), and PhD from the University of Otago, along with DipFA and DipTchg. With a background in secondary school art and art history teaching, Bell has contributed to curriculum courses for the Graduate Diploma of Education: Secondary since 1986 and has taught a range of art education courses at the College of Education. He has worked with pre-service teaching students for over twenty years, spending the past decade at the College focusing on curriculum and pedagogy in humanities subjects such as visual arts, art history, classics, Japanese art history, and Asian Studies. He was promoted to full Professor effective 1 February 2018 and subsequently became Emeritus Professor. Bell continues to teach in postgraduate programmes, supervises postgraduate research, and contributes to BA-level courses.

Bell’s research specializations include visual arts education encompassing epistemology, the construction of curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy; aesthetic education; museum education programmes; substantive aesthetics in the Japanese visual field, particularly ukiyo-e; Japanese arts in New Zealand contexts; and New Zealand/Asian Studies. He plays an active role in secondary art education curriculum review and in the development of assessment for art history with the Ministry of Education and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. Key publications include books Chūshingura and the Floating World (2001), Ukiyo-e Explained (2004), and Hokusai’s Project (2007); journal articles such as “Looking back, moving forward: Print media in China since 2000” (New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 2024) and “Rethinking Yayoi Kusama: Neuroaesthetics, Asobi, and the Creative Practice” (2017); and book chapters like “Sensory learning in cultural institutions: Sensory experience, aesthetic sensibility and intercultural learning in garden settings” (2024) and “Learning beyond museum walls: Virtual excursions at Te Papa Tongarewa” (2020). In August 2024, he delivered the William Mathew Hodgkins Memorial Lecture titled “Please touch! How museums, galleries and gardens foster aesthetic experience and arts learning” at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. His teaching areas cover secondary visual arts education, secondary art history education, secondary classical studies education, primary art education in BTchg and MTchgLn programmes, and art history and theory including Japanese art and ukiyo-e.