Ph Members
Current Members
Andreia Alves de Oliveira
Photographer, researcher, lecturer, co-editor of the photography magazine Membrana, Andreia Alves de Oliveira’s practice addresses conditions of contemporary life – work, education, leisure, displacement – through the visual examination of their spatial structures. Alves de Oliveira holds an MA and PhD in Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster in London and has taught at Birmingham City University. Previously, she studied law and worked as a lawyer. Selected exhibitions include Civilization, The Way We Live Now and a world touring exhibition and publication (Thames & Hudson, 2018) featuring images from her acclaimed project The Politics of the Office. Increasingly incorporating textual elements, Hunting Photography was selected by the International Association for the Theory of Photography’s Instagram takeover and she is currently working on Interior Desert, her first photo-text book. Of Portuguese origin, Alves de Oliveira moved recently from London to Thessaloniki, after falling in love with the city and its seafront.
Estéfani Bouza
Estéfani Bouza is a visual artist and researcher whose work focuses on ideas of archiving and collecting in photographic practice. She holds a PhD and a MA in photographic studies from the University of Westminster. Her work has been exhibited widely in UK, Spain, Portugal and South America, including Ambika P3 (London), the Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery, Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid), and Galeria Mascate (Porto Alegre) among others.
Liz J Drew
Liz J Drew is a writer, researcher, artist and tutor. She has lectured on various programmes for arts and humanities in Higher Education including as course director for research methods and other modules in history of art, film and visual media. Liz has designed and delivered innovative modules at under and postgraduate levels, she holds an award for Excellence in Teaching. More recent conference papers have been delivered at Photography and Film on the Left (Lisbon 2016-18) and Collaboration and Photography (Paris/Online, 2020-21). She is currently writing up her PhD thesis A Poetic Realism: Photography and Equality in the North of England 1968-2018, an analysis of participatory works and interactions between the local and global. Liz is also co-authoring a book relating to photography and research (Routledge 2022).
Paula Gortázar
Paula Gortázar is a photography researcher, artist and lecturer. In 2018 she completed a fully funded PhD at the University of Westminster, specialising in Eastern and Central European photography from the communist period. Her research has been published in different academic journals, including Photography & Culture and Fotocinema. Paula’s artistic practice also explores the relation between art and politics. She is particularly interested in the aesthetics of ‘the political’, as well as in contemporary forms of censorship and surveillance in the Western world. Her work has been widely exhibited in Canada, the USA, Germany, the UK and Spain, including venues like The Photographers’ Gallery, and published in different international media, such as the British Journal of Photography. Paula currently lectures in photography at the University of Westminster in London.
Alexandra Hughes
Alexandra Hughes is an artist and lecturer. Hughes’ practice brings together photography, sculptural materials, painting and performative gesture. Hughes creates installations that re-create worlds, throwing into question the boundaries of representation, environment, material, and imagination. Exhibitions include, Bridging The Distance, Four Corners Gallery, London (2021), Artists in the Field, Royal Geographical Society, London (2019), Liquid Land, Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge (2018), ROTOR, The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2010). Hughes curated performative symposium: Assembly, Baltic 39, Newcastle upon Tyne (2018). Talks include, Talking Photography: Reality Check, Birkbeck University, London (2017), Practicing the Anthropocene, Scottish National Galleries, Modern One, Edinburgh (2016), Artist in Conversation with Karen McQuaid (Curator, The Photographers’ Gallery), Siobhan Davies Studio, London (2010). Hughes received her MFA at The Slade School of Fine Art (2008) and PhD at Northumbria University (2019); her practice-based research titled, Wilding Photographs: Exploring the Turbulent and Affective Qualities of the Material Phenomenon of Photography.
Caroline Molloy
Caroline is an artist, academic and writer. She is the programme director of Fine Art, Digital Arts and Photography at University for the Creative Arts in Farnham. She holds an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, an MA in Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths UoL. and a PhD from Birkbeck in the Centre for Photographic History and Theory. Her research interests are focused on the marginalised voice in both gender and post/decolonial colonial contexts. Caroline recently exhibited in the Ph: The Photography Research Network exhibition Bridging the Distance at Four Corners, London and presented her work Women of Walsall was recently shown at the New Art Gallery Walsall (2021) as part of the Living Memory Project. Recent peer reviewed publications include ‘Rethinking the photographic studio as a politicised space’, in (2020) Ashley, T., Weedon, A. (eds.) Developing a Sense of Place: Models for the Arts and Urban Planning. London: UCL publishing. In addition to this, she regularly writes for Visual Studies, The Journal of Visual Practice, 1000words magazine and Photomonitor around the relationship between photography and visual culture.
Sukey Parnell Johnson
From a performing background, Sukey Parnell Johnson’s photography sprang out of a fascination with feminine identity and the hidden psychic transitions experienced by women in later life. She has won various awards including being twice a finalist in the Photographic Prize at the National Portrait Gallery with images from her project on midlife, Women of an Uncertain Age, and portraits of Bill Bailey and Dame Joan Bakewell are housed in the national archive. Her work has been exhibited widely and published in Vogue, The Face, I-D, and the Sunday Times, amongst others, as well as several monographs. She was awarded a PhD (by practice) for her thesis and installation film, Hagging the Image, in 2018. She is currently associate lecturer at King’s College in the Medical Humanities programme, course leader for Clod Ensemble in the Performing Medicine programme, collaborator for UCL within the APPLE-Tree study and co-convenor of the Photography Research Network.
Gil Pasternak
Gil Pasternak is Professor of Photographic Cultures and Heritage in the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) at De Montfort University (UK). His current research investigates intersections of photography with political realities, focusing specifically on uses of national and community photographic digital heritage. His recent substantial publications include The Handbook of Photography Studies (2020), Visioning Israel–Palestine: Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict (2020), and two special issues of Photography & Culture, one titled Photography in Transitioning European Communist and Post-Communist Histories (2019), and the other Photographic Digital Heritage in Cultural Conflicts. Pasternak has been Project Leader of the European Commission funded research project Digital Heritage in Cultural Conflicts (2018-21), Visiting Professor of photography and cultural heritage in Vehbi KOÇ Ankara Research Center at Koç University (Turkey, 2020-21), and Senior Visiting Researcher and Collections Advisor at the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia, 2021-22).
Annalisa Sonzogni
Annalisa Sonzogni is an artist, lecturer at Kingston School of Art and visiting lecturer at the University for the Creative Arts. Working with Photography and Moving image she explores how memory and remembering reconfigure the way we understand and represent iconic architectural buildings. Her installations are immersive environments that create a bridge between functional and imaginary spaces. Sonzogni’s work has been shown at Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan (2014), Old Lilian Baylis School in London (2015), Italian Cultural Institute in Mexico City (2017) and published in Camera Austria, C20 Magazine and Afterimage. She completed an MA in photography at the Royal College of Art (2008) and PhD by project (2016) at Kingston University.
Alexandra Tommasini
Alexandra Tommasini (PhD) is an art historian and archivist. She lectures and publishes widely and is a leading scholar on the work on photographer Gabriele Basilico. Her research has been published in academic journals including Modern Italy and Journal of European Studies, among others, and she was guest editor of the recent special issue of the Journal of Architecture on Basilico. She is co-editor of Bridget Riley: The Complete Prints (2020) and Bridget Riley: The Complete Paintings (2018), and works as Archive and Publications Manager for the artist. Alexandra is co-convenor of Ph.
Lauren Winsor
Lauren Winsor specialises in still life photography. Her photographic production house Another Photographer is based in Peckham Rye, London. Lauren held part-time Senior Lecturer posts in Photography for 15 years, and taught at the London College of Communication (UAL), University for the Creative Arts, University for the Arts Norwich, and Kingston School of Art, where she was Course Director of the BA programme. She has led workshops for a number of organisations including PhotoFusion and the V&A. Lauren received a Masters in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art in 2010, for which she was awarded the Leverhulme Trust award for creativity. Lauren holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Essex where she held the SPAH doctoral scholarship. Her thesis, supervised by Dawn Ades, explores the innovative photographic processes invented by the Surrealist photographer Raoul Ubac and reframes his practice as a form of anti-Nazi propaganda.
Dawn Woolley
Dawn Woolley is an artist, a research fellow at Leeds Arts University, and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Faculty Research Centre Business in Society at Coventry University. She completed an MA in Photography (2008) and PhD by project in Fine Art (2017) at the Royal College of Art. Woolley’s research examines contemporary consumerism and the commodified construction of gendered bodies, paying particular attention to the new mechanisms of interaction afforded by social networking sites. Recent solo exhibitions include; “Consumed: Stilled Lives” Perth Centre for Photography, Australia, (2021), “Dance for Good & Exercise Your Rights” Public Space One gallery, Iowa City, (Hard Stop 2020), “Consumed: Stilled Lives” Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds (2019) and “Visual Pleasure”, Hippolyte Photography Gallery, Helsinki, Finland (2013), Vilniaus Fotografijos Galerija, Lithuania (2012) and Ffotogallery, Cardiff (2011). Her monograph Consuming the Body: Capitalism, Social Media and Commodification is due to be by Bloomsbury published in 2022. Recent publications include: “The Quantified Self, The Ideology of Health and Fat”, in The Body Productive, London: Zero Books, 2022; “The Dissecting Gaze: Fashioned Bodies on Social Networking Sites”, in Revisiting the Gaze: Feminism, Fashion and the Female Body, (London: Bloomsbury, 2020) and ‘Aberrant consumers: Selfies and fat admiration websites’ Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, 6(2).
Ph: The Photography Research Network was established by Ben Burbridge and Olga Smith.
It is currently directed by Andreia Alves de Oliveira, Liz J Drew, Sukey Parnell Johnson, Gil Pasternak, Annalisa Sonzogni and Alexandra Tommasini.
Past Directors:
2016-–2017 Andreia Alves de Oliveira, Liz J Drew, Alexandra Tommasini, Gil Pasternak and Lauren Winsor
2013-–2016 Juliet Baillie, Gil Pasternak and Annebella Pollen
2010–2013 Ben Burbridge and Olga Smith
Ben Burbridge
Ben Burbridge is a Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Sussex, where he teaches the history and theory of photography and post-war American and European Art. He holds degrees in Art History from the University of Sussex (B.A. Hons. 2003; M.A., 2005) and The Courtauld Institute of Art (Ph.D., 2011). His research focuses on relationships between photography’s artistic and instrumental applications, and how the medium is implicated in wider social, cultural and political transformations. Burbridge is the curator of exhibitions including We Are Witnessing the Dawn of an Unknown Science (Permanent Gallery, Brighton, 2007); No Passaran! Robert Capa and the Spanish Civil War (Charleston Farmhouse Gallery, Firle, 2007) and The Daily Nice Take Away(Kunsthaus, Essen, 2010) and Brighton Photo Biennial 2012, Agents of Change: Photography and the Politics of Space. He was co-editor of Photoworks magazine and co-founder of Ph.
Olga Smith
Olga Smith is a research fellow at Warwick University and at the Humboldt University, Berlin. She has previously held positions at the University of St Andrews and Tate Gallery, London. Olga’s doctoral thesis ( University of Cambridge) was devoted to the study of the photographic practices and critical approaches to photography in France since the 1970s. In conjunction with this research she has held a visiting fellowship at the École normale supérieure, Paris. Olga has published a number of articles on contemporary artists such as Pierre Hyghe, Christian Boltanski and Valérie Jouve, and she is the co-editor of Anamnesia: Private and Public Memory in Modern French Culture (Peter Lang: 2009). She is the co-founder of Ph.