First published in CommUnicate issue 316.

Professor Paul Smith, from the History of Art department, has been awarded a Getty Scholar Research Grant by the Getty Research Institute. From September 2007 until June 2008 Paul will be one of twelve internationally-renowned scholars working on the research theme of Change, and will be looking specifically at The "Nature" of Style Change using neuroscientific ideas about art and natural language.

The researchers will be seeking answers to questions such as: "In the absence of external compulsion, why should an apparently stable set of forms give way to another? When such compulsion is evident—in conquest, migration, conversion, revolution, technological invention, economic boom or bust—how do the capacities of art absorb, constrain, and channel its impact?"