Rachel Dedman (b. 1989, London) is a curator, writer, and art historian.
Since 2019, Rachel has been the Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Recent projects for the V&A include the exhibition Jameel Prize: Poetry to Politics; the commissioning platform Beirut Mapped; and the establishment of a research residency programme for artists and designers.

Beyond the V&A, Rachel is the curator of Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery for Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, and The Whitworth, Manchester, in 2023-2024. She is curating the next edition of the State of Fashion Biennale in Arnhem, the Netherlands, with Louise Bennetts in 2024.

From 2013-2019 Rachel was based in Beirut, Lebanon. Notable projects include At the still point of the turning world, there is the dance, for Ashkal Alwan’s Home Works Forum 8 at Sursock Museum, Lebanon, 2019; Shorthand: Nadim Karam, notes from the archive, A.MUSE.UM, Lebanon, 2019; A Thousand Hands: Legacies and Futures of Care in Brent, Kiln Theatre, London, 2018; Labour of Love: New Approaches to Palestinian Embroidery, Palestinian Museum, West Bank, 2018; and Midad: The Public and Intimate Lives of Arabic Calligraphy, Dar el-Nimer, Lebanon, 2017.


Rachel is co-founder and editor of polycephaly.net, and one third of Radio Earth Hold, a research and broadcast collective supported by the Serpentine Galleries and Nottingham Contemporary. She is widely published in academic and contemporary art contexts, and trained in the history of art at St John’s College, Oxford, and Harvard University, where she did her Postgraduate studies as the Von Clemm Fellow, 2012/13.

Email: racheljdedman@gmail.com