Aesthetics; critical philosophy of race; critical pedagogy; critical whiteness studies; cultural sociology; epistemology of race; histories and theories of photography; modern and contemporary art history and theory; philosophies of the image; sociology of art; sociology of culture; sociology of race; sociology of taste; visual cultures; white complicity pedagogy

I am a sociologist and educator in art history, theory and visual culture. I hold degrees in Sociology (PhD) from King’s College London, Art Theory (MPhil) from the Royal College of Art and Sound Arts and Design (BA Hons) from University of the Arts London.

I have taught at the University of Brighton since 2010 and in 2017 took up a permanent teaching and research role in the School of Art and Media. I am a member of the Cross-School Research Ethics Committee (CREC), the Centre for Spatial and Social Justice and the Photography Research Excellence Group.

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 (Mayor of London) in 2019 and again in 2022. I am currently working on a monograph titled Not the Light: The Image in the White Racial Frame (Bloomsbury Philosophy, 2027), continuing my research into the visual, social and epistemic dimensions of racial whiteness.

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 also enjoyed a parallel career in public museums and galleries. From 2007-10 I was curator at the Grade I listed Fulham Palace, was then an arts and heritage consultant for London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, and from 2012-19 I worked in Education and as an editor at The Photographers’ Gallery, London.

danielcampbellblight.com

From 2023-present I am Visiting Lecturer in Social Sciences at King's College London. In 2022 I was Carmen Mortensen Endowed Visiting Scholar in Art and Art History at University of Utah; in 2019 I was Visiting Scholar at Yale Centre For British Art, Yale University; and from 2016-19 I was Visiting Lecturer in Historical and Critical Studies at the Royal College of Art. Since 2010 I have worked in various lecturing and tutoring roles internationally, at Camberwell College of Arts, Coventry University, Goldsmiths College, Royal Academy of Art The Hague, University of Copenhagen, University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, Photography Studies College Melbourne, University of the Arts London and University of Oxford.

I welcome PhD supervisees from across arts practice and sociology, particularly in art and culture as they intersect with social research into race, racialisation and whiteness.

My approach to supervision is grounded in critical pedagogy and student-centred learning. I provide an open, supportive, and generous space for discussing ideas, in which we can learn from each other and discover new ideas and methods together.

Please feel welcome to email me if you would like to informally discuss your research proposal.