Isabel Young Surrey, United Kingdom

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Isabel Young is an artist and curator and Senior Tutor (Research) at the RCA where she has been lecturing and researching since 2018. Isabel's work focuses on establishing an emerging art-archaeology field concerned with building Heritage Futures and advancing interpretive possibilities.

Isabel Young is an artist, curator and Senior Tutor (Research) at the Royal College of Art, London where she has been a lecturer since 2018. She holds a Masters in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art and a second Masters in Landscape Architecture from the University of Greenwich. Through her practice-led research she has established a distinctive art-archaeology field informed by archaeological theory and experimental archaeology. She works within an expanded field practice uniquely combining architectural model-making, sculpture and assemblage. Alongside her creative practice, Young also curates interdisciplinary exhibitions as living-labs and conceived as sites of excavation.

Fieldwork in ancient archaeological landscapes is central to Isabel’s practice. She travels whenever she can and her research has led her to some of the most significant ancient monuments of Europe. Through this she has established a distinctive art-archaeology field informed by archaeological theory and experimental archaeology. Interested in the ways that ideas of the present have come from past contexts, she considers the people who occupy/ied ancient spaces in recognition that what is happening now is a result of what has come before.

A recent example of Isabel’s practice includes ‘The Lararium Project: Art and Experimental Archaeology’ (2023) for which she sculpted a Romano-British household shrine for Butser Ancient Farm, a museum of experimental archaeology. As a permanent fixture of Butser’s Roman Villa, the lararium is actively used for education and reenactments gaining insights into the dynamics of Roman domestic life and ancient practices.

Alongside her creative practice, Young also curates. ‘In Search of Ghosts’ (2025) was an interdisciplinary contemporary art exhibition curated at 44AD Artspace, and as part of Fringe Arts Bath (FaB), which attracts around 8000 festival visitors. The exhibition showcased creative responses to archaeology and re-examined past worlds and their assemblages from a contemporary position. Significantly, the impact of this curatorial project opened up questions about how our own Plastic Age might be decoded in 5000 years, and speculated on the future archaeology of waste.

Isabel lives in Surrey where she has transformed her house into a dedicated studio-lab. When she is on campus at the RCA her teaching specialism is interdisciplinary art, foregrounding contemporary art, material culture, sites and architectural spaces across time.

Young is Ambassador and Judge of the Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award and the Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award. In 2025 Isabel was awarded the status of Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). Also in 2025, she became Co-Chair of the Research Ethics Network at the RCA.

Isabel is an Academic Member of the Landscape Institute (UK's chartered professional body for landscape architects), a Member of the Vernacular Architecture Group, and a Member of EXARC (Professional Association for Experimental Archaeology).

Isabel Young’s art-archaeology practice has been included in numerous exhibitions and projects including: a solo exhibition at ‘Metaverse Art Space’ (2024) that investigated art ‘with’ archaeology in contemporary digital platforms; ‘In Search of Ghosts’ at 44AD Artspace (2025); The London Group (2025); a group exhibition at The Hunt Museum, Ireland (2025); ‘Deep Time’ at Newark Works, Bath (2024); ‘Dwellings’ at Fronteer Gallery (2024); ‘Hidden’ at House of Smalls (2024); ‘Silent Disco’ curated by Graham Crowley (2023); ‘The Lararium Project’ at Butser Ancient Farm (2023); ‘Fictions II’ – a two-person exhibition for Blyth Gallery at Imperial College (2022); ‘Fictions I’– a two-person exhibition for The Cello Factory, London (2020); ‘Speed of Thought’ at Newington Gallery, London (2019) and ‘Activate’, a research exhibition with RCA colleagues (2024). Isabel is also a member of the ‘Drawing as Interdisciplinary Research’ network group which began as a symposium at The Drawing Room in 2023.