phd

Postgraduate Research

Current Research Students

Iwan Bala – Title: Custodial Aesthetics: Cultural Memory in Contemporary Visual Art Practice in Wales.

Director of Studies: Professor Lisa Lewis
First Supervisor: Professor Mark Durden

David Barnes – Title: 'Small Stories’ – Photographer and community practice in Wales.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden
First Supervisor: Professor Lisa Lewis

Alba Gimenez – Title: Between Evidence and Estrangement: Brecht’s Resonance in Contemporary Documentary Practice.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden 
First Supervisor: Dr Eileen Little

Lukasz Kubicki – Title: Photography and Durational Relationships to the Landscape.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden 
First Supervisor: Dr Eileen Little

Edgar Martins – Title: The Impossible Document
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden 
First Supervisor: Lisa Barnard, Reader in Documentary Photography

James Milne – Title: Hidden in Built Form: Imaging Unconsidered Landmarks. Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden. Supervisor: Eileen Little

Les Monaghan – Title: The Triumph of Self.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden 
First Supervisor: Lisa Barnard, Reader in Documentary Photography

George Petry – Title: The Vietnam War archive of Welsh Photographer Philip Jones Griffiths.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden 
First Supervisor: Dr Russell Roberts, Reader in Photography

Ana Catarina Pinho – Title: Transformations of the Real: Photographic Archives in Contemporary Documentary Practices
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden
First Supervisor: Lisa Barnard, Reader in Documentary Photography

Clémentine Schneidermann – Title: Fantasies from the Real : The Representation(s) of Working-Class Communities in Documentary Photography.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden 
First Supervisor: Lisa Barnard, Reader in Documentary Photography

Annual Postgraduate Conference

Each year the Faculty of Business and Creative Industries hosts a postgraduate symposium. This is an opportunity for research students to talk about their research project within a supportive and scholarly environment. It is designed to help students develop their presentation skills, evaluate their progress, and contribute to the scholarly development of their colleagues.

Alumni Successes

  • Daniel Blaufuks published Fábrica, a book and film with a collection of images composed into an expanded scenery of memory, a walk through the abandoned spaces of one of the largest factories in Europe in an once flourishing industrial region, that never recovered from the loss of the textile market to the Chinese exports.
  • Amak Mahmoodian exhibited her work at Belfast Exposed as part of Catharsis – a new group exhibition which brings together three projects by contemporary photographers who use portraiture in innovative ways to explore and come to terms with complex family or personal histories.
  • Dragana Jurišic’s solo exhibition My Own Unknown opened at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in France on November 9 with a conversation between the artist Dragana Juriši? and the curator Natasha Christia and an after party.

Joao Leal completed his PhDResisting Narrative: Artistic research, narrativity and the constraints of academia
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden 
First Supervisor: Lisa Barnard, Reader in Documentary Photography

Alfredo Cramerotti completed his PhD, Expanded Photography: The Hyperimage, in 2020.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden 
First Supervisor: Lisa Barnard, Reader in Documentary Photography

Joanna Vestey completed her PhD, Visualising Collective Fictions, in 2019.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden
First Supervisor: Lisa Barnard, Reader in Documentary Photography

Martina Cleary completed her PhD, Photography as a Site of Mnemonic Return in The Construction and Reconstruction of Identity, in 2017.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden
First Supervisor: Dr Helen Sear

Daniel Blaufuks completed his PhD, Photography in the works of Georges Perec and W.G. Sebald and the relation to Memory and the Holocaust, in 2017.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden 
First Supervisor: Dr Russell Roberts, Reader in Photography

Amak Mahmoodian completed her PhD, Double Identity, in 2015. Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden. First Supervisor: Dr Helen Sear.

Dragana Jurisic completed her PhD YU: The Lost Country, in 2013.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden. First Supervisor: Professor Ian Walker.

Liam Devlin completed his PhD, Can a multi-disciplinary approach to research and presentation act as an aid to agency within contemporary documentary, in 2013.
Director of Studies: Dr Ian Walker
First Supervisor: Dr Russell Roberts, Reader in Photography

Geraint Davies completed his PhD, Dimensions, Perceptions: Resonances from Durer’s MELENCOLIA I, in 2012.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden

Ronnie Close completed his PhD, The Abject and the Envy: An Investigation of Art & Politics in the 1981 Hunger Strikes in Northern Ireland, in 2011.
Director Studies: Professor Mark Durden
First Supervisor: Dr Russell Roberts, Reader in Photography

Yannis Kontos completed his PhD, Beyond photojournalism : constraints and contradictions in hostile environments, in 2011. 
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden

Stuart Bingham completed his PhD, Photography and the Falklands conflict : Homeric heroism in modern warfare, in 2010.
Director of Studies: Dr Ian Walker

Paul Cabuts completed his PhD, Image and Imagination: Creative Photography and the South Wales Valleys, in 2009. 
Director of Studies Dr Ian Walker

Helen Sear completed her PhD by published work in 2009 and included the document Reconstructing experience : a critical commentary on selected works made by the artist Helen Sear.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden

KayLynn Deveney completed her PhD, Confessions, conventions and cockroaches : reflecting on home via photography and the diary, in 2008.
Director of Studies: Professor Mark Durden

Simon Stahli completed his PhD, Dwelling Contingency: Towards a Reappraisal of the Late Work of the British Photographer Raymond Moore, in light of its affinities with a Zen Buddhist worldview, in 2008.
Director of Studies Dr Ian Walker.

Julia Peck completed her PhD, The Making of the Australian Landscape: Photographic Contributions to the Construction of a Nation from New South Wales and Victoria 1870-1917, in 2007.
Director of Studies Dr Ian Walker.