Dr Annebella Pollen is an academic with interests in material and visual culture. Her research areas include mass photography and the popular image, and histories of art, craft, design and dress, especially marginal, alternative and non-canonical forms.

Annebella supervises PhD projects in visual and material culture, histories of photography and popular image cultures, Mass Observation, modern British art and design, non-elite design and dress history, everyday / vernacular cultural practices and countercultures. She is currently supervising eleven doctoral students, including three in funded partnership with museums. She has supervised five PhD students to completion, including a PhD by Publication, and has examined eighteen PhDs at University of the Arts, Birkbeck, Brighton, Bolton, Glasgow School of Art, Huddersfield, Lancaster, Nottingham, Sheffield, SOAS, Sussex, UCL and Ulster.

Annebella Pollen will take up a new title, Professor of Visual and Material Culture, from 1 September 2022. From 2022-24 she is on research leave, supported by a Philip Leverhulme Prize. Previously she has been Director of the Centre for Design History (2020-22), Academic Programme Leader in History of Art and Design (2017-20), AHRC Research Fellow (2015-17) and Director of Historical and Critical Studies (2012-15). She holds a PhD from University of the Arts London, an MA in Design History and Material Culture (Distinction), and a BA in Visual Culture (First Class) from University of Brighton. 

Annebella’s longstanding interest in mass photography has covered found photos, family albums, vernacular archives, amateur competitions, photographic publishing and the photographic industry. It is the focus of her book Mass Photography: Collective Histories of Everyday Life (2015; paperback 2021). Further research can be found in her co-edited collections, Reconsidering Amateur Photography (2012) and Photography Reframed: New Visions in Contemporary Photographic Culture (2018), and her many journal contributions and book chapters. Annebella regularly writes for the photographic press; her ongoing essay series, Flea Market Photobooks, for Source: Thinking through Photography, explores non-canonical illustrated publications.

In 2015-17 Annebella held an AHRC Fellowship, Picturesqueness in Everything: The Visual and Material Culture of British Woodcraft Groups, 1916-2016. This project explored art, craft, design and dress as forms of resistance, radical educational strategies and utopian ideals, focusing on progressive interwar youth organisations. Major outcomes included the award-winning monograph, The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians and a co-curated exhibition of the same name at Whitechapel Gallery, 2015-16. These countercultural communities inspired Annebella's 2021 book, Nudism in a Cold Climate: The Visual Culture of Naturists in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain.

Histories of fashion and graphic design inform Annebella's popular image research, which includes studies of Victorian valentines, Edwardian postcards and the silhouette portrait. She co-edited Dress History: New Directions in Theory and Practice (2015) and has authored essays on dressing-up costume, political uniforms, secondhand clothes and dress reform.

Forthcoming publications include a major commissioned history of the British Council's use of art and craft in international cultural relations since 1935, entitled Art without Frontiers. Following her 2021 Philip Leverhulme Prize, Annebella will be on research leave in 2022-24 to complete existing writing projects and to develop new areas including a new book and exhibition on the history of photography by children since 1900.

A personal view:

The impetus for many of my projects comes from teaching; all my research is developed by sharing and testing in classroom settings. As practitioners and cultural commentators, students bring unique perspectives and insights and act as formal and informal collaborators; in turn, students experience validation and engagement through participation in live debates and public-facing research.

In the crucible of the classroom, through my research-led modules and my research-oriented methods teaching, I demonstrate how I do what I do, as well as how I know what I know, so students understand the structures behind the information and become independent, professional researchers themselves. This approach is informed by pedagogic scholarship, including a 2010 PGCert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (Distinction) and 2020 Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

I have taught History of Art and Design at all levels at Brighton since 2005, including as Academic Programme Leader, 2017-20, as well as history and theory teaching for Fashion, Textiles, Design and Craft, including as Director of Historical and Critical Studies, 2012-15.

My current focus is on the support of PhD students. I lead funded collaborative doctoral projects with external partners including Worthing Museum and National Science and Media Museum, Bradford. I am also committed to developing skills internationally, demonstrated in my 2021 leadership of the British Academy-funded workshop series, Design Writing: Words and Images, Objects and Histories, for doctoral and early career researchers in Brazil.

I particularly enjoy developing and leading collaborative staff-student research projects with arts and heritage organisations, such as Profiles of the Past and Objects Unwrapped. These projects demystify research, break down staff-student hierarchies, share networks and resources, teach aspiring professionals the tools of the trade and create showcases for original work that becomes part of public debate.