Areas of interest: histories and theories of photography; photography and philosophy; the essay form; image-text relations; contemporary photographic art; contemporary photobooks; sociology of race; critical philosophy of race; racial capitalism; critical race theory; critical whiteness studies; critical pedagogy

Areas of specialisation: photography and racial whiteness; photography and race; photography and colonialism; photography and orientalism; photography and imperialism; photography and scientific racism; photography and literature; photography and the essay form

I hold degrees in Sound Arts and Design (BA Hons) from University of the Arts London and Communication Art and Design (MPhil) from the Royal College of Art. I am currently undertaking a PhD in Education Research in the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy at King’s College London.

I have taught at the University of Brighton since 2009 and in 2017 took up a tenured post as Lecturer in Photography (0.5FTE), where I teach across Historical and Critical Studies modules at undergraduate and postgraduate level. From 2016-19 I was Visiting Lecturer in Historical and Critical Studies at the Royal College of Art and have also worked in various lecturing and tutoring roles at Camberwell College of Arts, Coventry University, Royal Academy of Art The Hague, University of Copenhagen, University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, Photography Studies College Melbourne, University of Oxford and Yale University.

My research is practice-based, predominantly writing and increasingly images, which are made to think with when I’m working, and produce their own meanings and narratives too.

I work on various forms of the essay, fiction and poetry, and have written for magazines and journals including 1000 Words, Aperture, Foam, frieze, the Guardian, Philosophy of Photography, Photoworks, Vogue Italia, and contributed chapters to publications from Manchester Art Gallery, UCL Art Museum, Art Museum of Estonia, FOMU Belgium, the Australian Centre for Photography and Rowman & Littlefield.

My first edited book, The Image of Whiteness: Contemporary Photography and Racialization, was published by SPBH Editions and Art on the Underground in 2019. I am currently working on a monograph provisionally titled Photography’s White Racial Frame (Bloomsbury, 2024).

I have experience producing research and publications for large public arts institutions and small galleries. From 2006-09 I was curator at the Grade I listed Fulham Palace, and from 2012-16 I worked in Education and as an editor at The Photographers’ Gallery, programming talks and events, and commissioning and editing writing both online and in print. From 2013-15 I co-curated Chandelier, a collaborative project space in the studio of artist Karen Knorr. I have also presented my research and writing at Tate Modern, Museum of Modern Art New York, Yale Centre for British Art and Open Eye Gallery Liverpool. Some of this work has been funded by Arts Council England, The Elephant Trust and Art on the Underground/Mayor of London.

My teaching draws from methods in student-centred learning, divergent and dialogical teaching. I attempt to dismantle teacher-student hierarchies and instead position learning as the process of both teacher and student changing their minds and learning from one another through meaningful educational encounters.

My undergraduate teaching includes the Second Year (Level 5, HCS4) elective Photography, Race, Whiteness, which examines racial whiteness in relation to the ongoing history of Western colonialist, imperialist and orientalist photographies, counter-framed by examples of race-critical contemporary photographic art. Informed by my scholarly research, the seminars critically engage themes such as photography and systemic racism in the present day, the invention and visual culture of racial whiteness, and how one might look at and see whiteness photographically.

I tutor (Level 6, HCS5) extended essays and dissertations, and teach across other Historical and Critical Studies modules on BA Photography, including lectures and participation in student-led seminars on the origins of documentary photography, photography and surrealism, photography, fiction and narrative, and photomontage. 

At postgraduate level I organise the two Historical & Critical Studies modules taught within MA Photography. I am module leader for Contemporary Debates, a critical survey of key modes of thinking in photography theory which include seminars and workshops on Medium, Technology, Apparatus; Materiality, Immateriality, The Incorporeal; Automatic, Accident, Chance; Picturing, Stillness, Time; Truth, Fiction, Fictionality; Documentary Aesthetics; Queering Photography; Photography, Race, Whiteness and Photography and the Essay Form. I am also module leader for MA Dissertation.