Professor Deborah Swallow is Märit Rausing Director of The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK.
Educated at Cambridge University, UK (BA in English Literature and PhD in Social Anthropology), she moved to The Courtauld in 2004 from the Victoria and Albert Museum where she had been Director of Collections and Keeper of the Asian Department between 2001 and 2004, following a career in the Museum’s Indian Department which began in 1983. Her first professional appointment was as Assistant Curator at the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University (1976-83). In the course of her career Professor Swallow has curated and managed a range of exhibitions, and published and supervised research on Indian and South-East Asian art and culture.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, She was for many years Chairman of the Emslie Horniman Anthropological Scholarship Fund, operated under the aegis of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) and now chairs the RAI Art Committee. She is a Trustee of the Art Fund (UK) and a Trustee of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, UK (INTACH UK).
The Courtauld Institute of Art, an independent college of the University in 2002, is one of the world’s premier institutions for the research and study in the history of art, architecture and conservation, and holds internationally important collections of European fine and applied art. It is actively engaged with India in the fields of art history and conservation.