Dr. Áine O'Brien

Dr. Áine O’Brien is a curator and researcher who has worked in the US, Ireland and the UK. Founder/Director of FOMACS (2007–12), focusing on socially engaged art, migration, advocacy and cultural policy; Co-Founder/Co-Director of Counterpoints (2012–2020), a London–based arts agency foregrounding arts, displacement and social change. Her productions include documentary film, print, exhibition and curation, exploring global storylines linking histories of displacement with social justice and change. Curatorial/research initiatives include: Whoare We?,Tate Exchange (2017–2020); Beyond the Now Collective – comprising partners working in locations across Europe and SWANA(2021); Mutual Affinities (commissioned by Creative Scotland, 2022); Art, Migration and the Production of Radical Democratic Citizenship (co-edited with Agnes Czajka, Rowman International, Frontiers of the Political Series, 2022); Collaborative Incubator Toolkit, comprising commissions with investigative journalists and socially engaged artists and activists (with European Cultural Foundation).

Áine mentors socially engaged artists who work alongside communities of place in the context of the Learning Lab Agency, a platform supporting cooperative (un)learning, she is Creative Director of Summer School on Collaborative Practice and Social Change (with Create National Development Agency for Collaborative Arts). Forthcoming publication: ‘Inventories of Place and Practice: An Epi-Dialogical Mentoring Conversation’, Socially Engaged Art Practice in Ireland: Contested Narratives, Places and Futures (chapter with Kate O’Shea, Cork University Press, 2026). In development: Socially Engaged Art and the Public Practice of Reconciliation (with The MAC Belfast, and the National Sculpture Factory, Cork. Conference Co- Curator/Organiser: Bearing Witness in Turbulent Times – The Urgency of Socially Engaged Art and Community Practice (October 2026).

‍