Research Catalogue

I am an academic researcher and teacher at Manchester School of Art. My work straddles social and visual anthropology; ethnography and documentary filmmaking; arts in health and recoverism; artist development in relation to small scale contemporary visual arts organisations; and generative research in the arts and social sciences, including practice-led, co-produced, and artistic research approaches. Past work includes academic writing on observational cinema, visualising anthropology, collaboration through craft, the ethnographic turn in crossings between art and anthropology, how drawing reveals community connectivity, and why social anthropologists have been wrong to exclude lens-based image-making – and specifically observational cinema - from their theories of drawing. I have made video portraits of artists who have a learning disability , of hill farmers in the north west of England and their skilled practices, and more recently used video within a generative research arts project co-produced with artists and people in recovery from addiction. My current research concerns two linked areas – socially engaged art, where in partnership with the UK charity Axisweb and KTP associate Rebecca Senior, we are developing validation processes for social art practitioners; and recovery, where in partnership with Mark Prest, founding director of Portraits of Recovery, we are developing practice-led research into recovery and art. I currently supervise a number of doctoral student research projects in areas including social practice in art and design, art writing and art networks, arts for health in the context of devo-Manchester, visual ethnography and artist development.