Neil Mulholland

Neil Mulholland is Professor of Contemporary Art Practice & Theory in The University of Edinburgh. His research is focused on neomedievalisms, paragogy, and magic.

Neil's work on neomedievalism and the nonmodern is through a long-standing artistic collaboration with Dr Norman Hogg (Ottawa, Canada) as the Confraternity of Neoflagellants.

His distinctive paragogy is manifest in his writing (Re-imagining the Art School: Paragogy and Artistic Learning), and his art (Shift/Work). Peer-to-peer co-creation and Open Educational Practices are core to how Neil teaches (MA Contemporary Art Theory) and inform how he shares his work (modifiable Open Educational Resources).

Neil's current research frames contemporary art from the perspectives of magic theory. He is currently writing a book - Crafting Magic - examining the many ways in which magic and art assemble personae, methods and tools to situate effects.

Crafting Magic is also an artistic project, an openly licensed grimoire of magical personae, methods and tools that can be ritually modded. Neil's most recent Crafting Magic workshop, held in Tamworth Central (Ontario, Canada), engaged artists in magic's vast repertoire of methods such as analogical thinking, mismorphism, generative grammar, ritualism, transfiguration, elevation, magic circles, kayfabe, and thickening. This Tamworth apprenticeship culminated in an exhibition of the ensuing effects (23 July – 27 September 2025).

The methodological inventiveness required by magic and Open Educational Practices makes them inherently ecological ways of working. They demand whole systems thinking. Framing participants, methods and tools as agents in situating action is a vital means of conjuring new worlds of relations.