Postgraduate Research Symposium (hybrid)
School of Media and Creative Industries
Faculty of Education, Society and Creative Industries
Wednesday, 11 December 2024, 12:30-2:30pm, Room 302 Northern Centre of Photography and Teams
12:30 - Introduction, Prof. Alexandra Moschovi
12:35 - Clay (Co)Construction, Mary Watson
12:55 - Connecting Diverse Communities to the North-East Coast and Countryside through Socially Engaged Media Arts-based Practices, Hazel Soper
13:15 Towards an Inclusive Re/visualisation of Women’s Work, Sophie Piper
13:35 Remapping the Mechanics of Representation, Chris Harrison
13:55 Discussion and closing remarks, Prof. Caroline Mitchell
Abstracts and biographies
Mary Watson
Clay (Co)Construction
This research investigates how co-constructed clay practices can enhance health, wellbeing, and reduce social isolation among military veterans and their community in Sunderland. In partnership with Veterans in Crisis Sunderland (VICS), it employs clay-based activities as therapeutic and community-building tools within a Participatory Action Research framework, emphasising veterans’ active input through workshops, exhibitions, and interviews to foster belonging and empowerment. By exploring sustainable models of practice, co-producing creative capital, and veteran identity, the study contributes to public health dialogues and the development of participant-led models in socially engaged arts practice.
Mary Watson is a ceramic artist and researcher engaging in collaborative projects with community groups and charities. Her practice focuses on creating work that embodies participants' identities, communities, and experiences of place, which she considers a form of abstract portraiture. Through sculptural installations and functional pottery, inspired by people, places, and drawing games, Watson aims to capture shared narratives and societal issues. In recent years, Watson has incorporated QR codes into the artwork, linking photography and audio recordings of participant stories, further deepening the connection between artwork and audience. Watson is an AHRC, Northern Bridge Collaborative Doctorate Award holder, 2023-2027 and has worked as an Associate Tutor and Technician at the University of Sunderland since 2019, whilst maintaining her creative practice. Watson gained a first-class honours degree in Fine Art from the University of Dundee in 2015, followed by a Masters in Ceramics from the University of Sunderland in 2021.
Hazel Soper
Connecting Diverse Communities to the North-East Coast and Countryside through Socially Engaged Media Arts-based Practices
This PhD research project aims to connect diverse communities to Souter Lighthouse and the Leas through socially engaged media arts practice.
The project specifically addresses three questions:
- What models of new media art can emerge from collaborations between natural green and blue heritage sites and communities living in geographic areas of high deprivation?
- How can socially engaged new media arts broker more equitable community access to National Trust outdoor free to use sites?
- What new models of sharing and exhibition can be fostered by new media arts responding to blue and green heritage sites, in collaboration with traditionally underserved communities?
Hazel Soper creates immersive installation work, located in a world post-apocalypse, as an eco-feminist society forages through the wreckage of past religion, folklore, and capitalism. Her approach assembles a variety of materials and ideas to create layered complex narratives, spanning the fictional and non-fictional, abject and romantic, public and private. She uses video, audio, d.i.y. technologies, printmaking, and sculpture to create environments between care and the uncanny. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at NeMe, Limassol (2019); the Baltic, Gateshead (2021), and her solo shows I Lived Here Once and Then You Killed Me, OUTPOST Gallery, Norwich and Ode to Peg Powler, Dead Dog Gallery, Durham.
Sophie Piper
Towards an Inclusive Re/visualisation of Women’s Work
Historically, women have played an instrumental role in Sunderland’s industrial economy. The research explores and acknowledges the significance of women’s work by making the story of female employment visible, from World War II to the present day, through the mapping, reframing, and dissemination of archival photographs alongside community co-created imagery and new photographic works, forming new visual representations and inclusive narratives.
Sophie Piper is a photographic artist, specialising in portraiture. Her work has been exhibited in the UK and America. Sophie was recipient of the Royal Photographic Society Peter Hansell Scholarship in 2017, the NEPN DEVELOP Award in 2016, and was selected as an Emerging British Photographer by the Canadian Publisher Magenta in 2011.
Chris Harrison
Remapping the Mechanics of Representation: In What Ways Can Photography Offer New and Counterintuitive Perspectives that Give a Voice to the Periphery and Create an Alternative Way of Mapping Society and Culture?
Jarrow looms large in British social history and there have been many studies that have used the town as a shorthand for societal ills. For instance, in photography, publications The English at Home (Brandt, 1936), and In Flagrante (Killip, 1988) have included work made in the town. These and other works have concentrated on a narrative of despair and decline. The language used has been one of grainy and often intentionally dark images, or staged tableaux of poverty-stricken family life. In this research project, I intend to question the choice of photographic language used in conjunction with the place photographed and examine whether it is possible to create a new photographic narrative.
Chris Harrison has been working as a photographer for 34 years. His personal work combines image with text to explore ideas of home, history and class, positioning memory and storytelling at the centre of his practice.
Photography and the Museum: Re-evaluating the Past, Capturing the Present, Anticipating the Future
Museum Dialogues: Collecting, Exhibiting and Activating Photography
Friday 22, Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 November 2024
University of Sunderland and Online
Photography entered the museum shortly after its invention in the 19th-century, serving as a reproduction tool, a scientific process, a printmaking method, and an expressive medium. However, precisely because of these multiple functions, photography’s accommodation posed challenges then, as it does now with the mutable nature of contemporary “postphotographic,” born-digital images.
This conference seeks to examine the past, current, and future positioning of photography and its rich histories within museums. It aims to bring together curators, museum workers, archivists, photography practitioners, scholars, and researchers to explore international shifts in museum practices and their implications for global photographic cultures.
The conference is convened as part of Museum Dialogues, a 12 month research networking programme that aspires to transcend the disciplinary boundaries of art history, visual culture, photography, new media, museum and curating studies. As a discursive platform, Museum Dialogues seeks to bridge theory and practice with a view to developing a comprehensive understanding and exchange of innovative solutions, inquiries, and practical challenges relating to the exhibition, collection, and interpretation of photography.
Museum Dialogues Steering Group moderators
- Matteo Balduzzi, Curator, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea, Milan-Cinisello Balsamo (Italy)
- Iro Katsaridou (Co-Investigator), Assistant Professor, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece)
- Alexandra Moschovi (Principal Investigator), Professor of Photography and Curating, Northern Centre of Photography, University of Sunderland (UK)
- Arabella Plouviez, Photographer and Emerita Professor, University of Sunderland (UK) Amanda Ritson, Project Manager and Curator, NEPN and Northern Centre of Photography, University of Sunderland (UK)
Conference moderators
- Craig Ames, Artist and Senior Lecturer in Photography, Northern Centre of Photography, University of Sunderland (UK)
- Susanne Burns, Independent management consultant (UK)
- Suzy O’Hara, Lecturer in Digital Arts and Enterprise, School of Media and Creative Industries, University of Sunderland (UK)
- Alistair Robinson, Lecturer in Curating Contemporary Art, Newcastle University (UK)
- Alexander Supartono, Curator and Lecturer in History and Theory of Photography, Edinburgh Napier University (UK)
Conference speakers
- Shahidul Alam, Photojournalist, human rights activist, Founder of Drik, Pathshala, and Chobi Mela (Bangladesh)
- Martin Barnes, Senior Curator, Photography, V&A South Kensington (UK)
- Michela Bresciani, Curator, Ecomuseo Urbano Metropolitano Milano Nord-EUMM (Italy)
- Briony Carlin, Lecturer in Contemporary Art Curation, Newcastle University (UK)
- Angela Cheung, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, SOAS (UK)
- Giuseppe Chiavaroli, PhD Researcher, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy)
- Agnese Ghezzi, Postdoctoral Researcher, LYNX - Center for the Interdisciplinary Analysis of Images, Contexts, and Cultural Heritage, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca (Italy)
- Fabrizio Gitto, PhD Researcher, University of Italian Switzerland and Research Fellow, LYNX - Center for the Interdisciplinary Analysis of Images, Contexts, and Cultural Heritage, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca (Italy)
- Sze Ying Goh, Curator, National Gallery Singapore (Singapore) Alexandra Gow, PhD Researcher, University for the Creative Arts/National Galleries Scotland (UK)
- Lucia Halder, Head of the Photography Collection, Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum (Germany)
- John Kippin, Artist and Emeritus Professor in Photography, University of Sunderland (UK)
- Jayne Knight, PhD Researcher, University of Brighton/National Science and Media Museum (UK)
- Sandra Križić Roban, Senior Scientific Advisor in tenure, Institute of Art History, Zagreb (Croatia)
- Carol McKay, Independent writer and curator (UK)
- Daniel Palmer, Professor of Contemporary Art and Cultural Theory and Associate Dean of Research and Innovation, RMIT University (Australia)
- Christina Riggs, Professor of History of Visual Culture, Durham University (UK)
- Amanda Ritson, Project Manager and Curator, NEPN and Northern Centre of Photography, University of Sunderland (UK)
- Colin Robins, Photographer and Lecturer in Photography, Plymouth University (UK)
- Katrina Sluis, Associate Professor and Head of Photography and Media Arts, The Australian National University (Australia)
- Baiba Tetere, Lecturer in Social Sciences, Riga Stradins University (Latvia)
- Oliver Udy, Photographer and Head of Photography, Falmouth University (UK)
- Liz Wells, Independent writer and curator, Emerita Professor in Photographic Culture, University of Plymouth (UK)
Conference Technical Manager
- Michael Daglish, Senior Technician Digital Arts (Photography), University of Sunderland
Sunderland '73: People's Visual History. A Co-produced and Cross-section Partnership
Amanda Ritson, Project Manager NEPN, Museum Dialogues, Faculty of Education, Society and Creative Industries
This seminar will explore the mechanics, methodologies, and modes of producing and project-managing a co-produced cultural heritage project. Taking Sunderland ’73: The People’s History as a case-study, project manager Amanda Ritson will discuss project development, fundraising, participant engagement, relationship building, partnership and evaluation, unpicking the project’s research, outcomes, and impacts.
Visit the project page for more information and resources.
Rebel Women of Sunderland – The Podcast!
The podcast builds on the successful Rebel Women of Sunderland project which celebrates the lives, work, and activism of women past and present who have made a significant contribution to culture and life in and beyond Sunderland.
The first series has three episodes produced in and with communities in Sunderland about rebel women past and present working in creative writing, sports, music, and tech.
Speakers included Professor Mary Talbot, writer and academic.
The audience joined the podcast producers and participants to listen, celebrate, and discuss the issues and themes of the first series.
This community podcast research project is funded by the University of Sunderland's SunGen and Participations Interdisciplinary research networks and delivered by We Make Culture CIC.
On record: in conversation. Birmingham's music heritage as a circle of culture
Dr Siobhan Stevenson, Birmingham City University and Oral History Participation Curator for Voices of the City Project, Birmingham Museums. 2 December 2024.
Siobhan Stevenson is the Oral History Participation Curator for the Voices of the City project as part of Birmingham Museums Service. Before joining the project team she worked on several national and regional oral history projects and became passionate about making oral history archives accessible. Her research interests lie in oral history and community media and the power and potential that lies in listening to other people’s stories; working with communities to make archives accessible and support people in using them. At the Birmingham School of Media she teaches across production and research. Her PhD thesis (2019) was entitled Discourses of Community Radio: Social Gain Policies in Practice.
Rebel Women of Sunderland –The Podcast!
The podcast builds on the successful Rebel Women of Sunderland project that celebrates the lives, work, and activism of women past and present who have made a significant contribution to culture and life in and beyond Sunderland.
The first series has three episodes produced in and with communities in Sunderland about rebel women past and present working in creative writing, sports, music, and tech.
Speakers included Professor Mary Talbot, writer and academic.
The audience joined the podcast producers and participants to listen, celebrate, and discuss the issues and themes of the first series.
This is a community podcast research project funded by the University of Sunderland's SunGen and Participations Interdisciplinary research networks and delivered by We Make Culture CIC.
