Research Seminars in Photographic Cultures and Heritage - Semester Two 2025/26.

PHRC is pleased to announce the second season of its Research Seminars in Photographic Cultures and Heritage, a free, online series of talks and discussions exploring photography’s intersections with politics, technology, and cultural production.

The series investigates the rich and evolving field of photographic cultures and heritage, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and third-sector professionals to examine photography as a cultural artifact, historical record, and dynamic form of communication.

With a focus on critical methodologies, material practices, and global perspectives, the series addresses themes such as archival ethics, indigenous and everyday photography, technological shifts, memory and identity, and the politics of visual representation, dissemination and perception.

Through interdisciplinary talks and discussions, the seminars aim to expand and foster innovative insights into how photography and photographic practices are both shaping and shaped by cultural heritage – across time and space.

The programme for Semester Two 2025/26 includes three talks:

19 February 2026, 5.30pm – Associate Professor Donna West Brett (University of Sydney, Australia), “A Strange Tissue of Space and Time’: Modernist Photobooks & Propaganda”

26 March 2026, 5.30pm – Professor Sarah Parsons (York University, Toronto, Canada), “Feeling Exposed: Early Photography and Privacy in the United States”

7 May 2026, 5.30pm – PhD Candiate Javed Sultan (De Montfort University / Photographic History Research Centre), Constructing Dissent: Photojournalism and the Democratic Transition in Postcolonial India (1970s)”

Attendance is free but registration is required.

Organisation: Gil Pasternak, Director of Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, UK.

Please visit the series webpage for further information and registration links: https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/2026/02/02/research-seminars-in-photographic-cultures-and-heritage-semester-two-2025-26/