Personal profile

Research interests

Histories, theories and practices of contemporary art, photography, artist's film and video and sound arts; media arts practice; practice-based arts research; software studies; post-internet art; post-digital art; art writing; the essay form; semiotic and non-representational theories of the image; theories of visual intelligence and visual perception; sociology of race/racism; critical philosophy of race; critical race theory; critical whiteness studies; critical pedagogy; white complicity pedagogy; white self-criticality beyond anti-racism; white ignorance; white self-disclosure; white authorship; white ambush; white vigilance; the visual dimensions of white racial knowledge.

Supervisory Interests

I am interested in supervising or examining PhD projects related to my above research interests, including the history and theory of modern and contemporary art, photography, sociology of race, critical philosophy of race and critical whiteness studies.

Scholarly biography

I hold degrees in Sound Arts and Design (BA Hons) from University of the Arts London, Communication Art and Design (MPhil) from the Royal College of Art and Sociology (PhD) from King’s College London.

I have taught at the University of Brighton since 2010 and in 2017 took up a permanent post as Lecturer in the School of Art and Media. From 2023-present I am Visiting Lecturer in Social Sciences at King's College London. Additionally, from 2016-19 I was Visiting Lecturer in Historical and Critical Studies at the Royal College of Art, in 2019 I was a Visiting Scholar at Yale Centre For British Art, Yale University, and in 2022 I delivered a Carmen Mortensen Endowed Lecture as a Visiting Scholar in Art and Art History at University of Utah. 

Since 2010 I have worked in various lecturing and tutoring roles internationally, 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, King's College London and University of Oxford.

I have contributed to publications including 1000 Words, Aperture, Foam, frieze, Granta, The Guardian, Philosophy of Photography, Photography and Culture, Photoworks, Vogue Italia, and exhibition catalogues and scholarly books from Manchester Art Gallery, UCL Art Museum, Art Museum of Estonia, FOMU Belgium, the Australian Centre for Photography, Routledge and Rowman & Littlefield. I have presented research publicly at institutions including Tate Modern, MoMA PS1, Yale Centre for British Art and Open Eye Gallery Liverpool. 

My first edited book, The Image of Whiteness: Contemporary Photography and Racialization, was published by SPBH Editions and Art on the Underground in 2019, with a second edition published in 2022. I am currently working on a monograph provisionally titled Photography’s White Racial Frame (Bloomsbury Philosophy, forthcoming).

My art practice is informed by long term social research projects and includes photogaphy, digital media, data visualisation, drawing, text, sound and performance. In this I hope to parody, humourise and critique commonly consumed, sensed or technologised objects usually taken for granted, revealing the strange ways their meanings are bound up in social systems such as racial whiteness, exoticism and bourgeois taste. I have presented work at University of Brighton, Vogue Photo Festival, Frieze London, Phoenix Art Space and Tate Britain.

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 2012-19 I worked in Education and as 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.

Education/Academic qualification

PhD, King's College London

20202025

Master, Royal College of Art

20062009

Bachelor, University of the Arts London

20032006

External positions

Visiting Lecturer in Sociology, King's College London

1 Feb 20231 Feb 2025

Carmen Mortensen Endowed Visiting Scholar, University of Utah

Apr 2022

Visiting Scholar, Yale Centre for British Art/Ethnicity, Race and Migration Programme, Yale University

Sept 2019

Visiting Tutor, Critical and Historical Studies, Royal College of Art

1 Oct 20161 Aug 2019

Editor, The Photographers' Gallery

1 Apr 201310 Apr 2019

Keywords

  • TR Photography
  • BH Aesthetics
  • N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
  • HT Communities. Classes. Races
  • HM Sociology

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