In our ongoing effort to nurture more inclusive communities in and through the study of the history of art and the history of architecture, the Department of the History of Art & Architecture at Brown University is actively seeking PhD applicants from widely different backgrounds. To help make the application process as equitable and transparent as possible, we will be hosting a virtual workshop on writing effective statements of purpose. Whether you are actively considering applying for a PhD this year, or are simply curious about the process, we encourage you to attend. All are welcome!
In addition to specific advice on preparing your application, the workshop will also be an opportunity to talk with faculty members and current graduate students in our PhD program.
The Workshop took place virtually on October 16, 2025.
To assist applicants who missed the workshop, we have shared some helpful tips below.
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT:
Professor Jeffrey Moser:
Think about how you narrate the trajectory of your life, the trajectory of the training you have received, to get to this point where you want to apply and pursue the research you have chosen to pursue.
You can think of the SOP as telling an intellectual biography that demonstrates how you have become the ideal person to pursue the research you have proposed.
Be sure to talk about why Brown? Why do you want to come here and work with us specifically? Who do you want to work with specifically in the department, and why? How do you see the research that you're doing, or the interest you have, as relevant to the conversations that are evolving among our faculty?
This means that it is also important to think seriously about the actual work that the Brown HIAA faculty do. Read and familiarize yourself with the work of the professor with whom you are interested in working. Not just the subjects that we teach, but how we teach it, and the particular intellectual perspectives we take towards our material.
It is extremely important for the statement to be well written and clear. Can't stress that enough.
Several of you asked if it is okay to reach out to an advisor in advance of submitting your SOP, and the answer is a definitive yes. Please feel free to reach out to any member of the faculty in advance of your application. We recommend doing it well in advance of the application to find out if they're taking students, and if they find the research that you are pursuing to have potential at Brown.
Faculty will very often have responses, sometimes critical responses, that can be very helpful to you in thinking about how you want to stage your proposal.
Professor Lindsay Caplan:
It's very important to give us a sense of what is motivating you to ask the research questions you are asking. Are you/is your research in dialogue with other scholars and how have they influenced you?
I (Caplan) wrote multiple statements for multiple graduate programs. I often had to read something to get my mind thinking first. I couldn't just think in the abstract in some sort of frictionless universe. I often read something from professor or scholar's research, and that would help provoke a kind of orientation for my writing.
Writing this way will give us a kind of landscape of the conversation you feel you're a part of and will also really help us to see how we can help you and how you might fit in with us at Brown. That conversation can be a way that you talk about how you are thinking about this department in particular, but it will also give us a sense of how you're understanding the field...what the tools of art history will give you...where you want to push on it. So I really think invoking a conversation and situating yourself within it is a really great, vivid way to approach the statement.
Professor Moser:
One thing you can actually do to help yourself is to think creatively about how you see your interests by maybe ping-ponging between a couple of different people in the department.
In some cases, it might be much more focused on a specific topic or an area, but with, as to Professor Kaplan's point, it might be with a different professor, something about their methodology. Even if they work on a different part of the world, with different languages, in a different period...that could still be a way of connection. We do very much value that.
That's also true beyond the department. This is a very interdisciplinary place. All of our students engage with faculty outside of the department, so that's another thing to keep in mind.
Also, last thing, we are human.
So, when you are sending in questions to the program, when you're writing to me (Moser) about the program, or writing to your advisors about the program, just know that we receive dozens of inquiries, hundreds in some cases. If you don't receive a response from someone immediately, do not read anything into that. It's not the case that a professor who waits a week to respond to you is not actually interested in your research. It's just the sheer volume of inquiries that we receive sometimes results in a delayed reply.