I am Associate Professor in Art and Material Cultures of Britain in the History of Art Department at University College London. My work explores how the materials and technologies used to make images shape their meanings, with a particular interest in the politics of colour media. 

My first book The Rainbow’s Gravity (2023), asked how new colour media transformed the way Britain saw itself and its empire between 1856 and 1968. The book won the BAFTSS Best First Monograph Award and the MSA First Book Prize, was shortlisted for the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award and the MLA Prize for a First Book, in addition to long-listing for the Berger Prize for British Art History and a commendation from Historians of British Art. 

Before joining UCL I was a Junior Research Fellow at Cambridge University and a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. I received my PhD from Yale University in 2018, during which I spent time as a Museum Research Consortium fellow in MoMA’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, and as a Junior Fellow at The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

In 2024 I was selected as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and am a regular contributor to BBC Radio.

For non-Scottish readers, my first two names are (I am embarrassed to say) pronounced to rhyme with “thirsty sprinkler”. Dootson is (unfortunately) pronounced exactly as you think it is.