Professor Katy Parry

Profile

My work encompasses the politics of representation in its broadest terms, engaging with both official politics and protest and activism. I have researched visual politics, images of war, and popular media representations of soldiering and military veterans. In 2018–19 I was the lead convenor for a Sadler series seminar on ‘the war veteran in culture and society’, which invited various academics, curators, writers and veterans to discuss the culturally contested figure of the war veteran both historically and in contemporary media. I am a co-editor of the SAGE international journal, 'Media, War and Conflict'.

My most recent projects and publications include the following (see below for full list of publications):

The 'War Faces on Screen' collection (Bloomsbury, 2026) co-edited with Mani Sharpe (LCS, Uni of Leeds). One of our goals with this edited collection was to bring together film and photography scholars (who often speak past each other in how they talk about the ‘face’ in visual media) alongside insights from practitioners.

In 2024 I joined the editorial team behind the Election Analysis reports, for the UK General Election report, published just 10 days after the election, with blog-length insights from schoalrs and practitioners. This includes a co-written piece with Beth Johnson on the ‘tetchiness’ of the campaign.

The research-led textbook, Visual Communication: Understanding Images in Media Culture (SAGE) with co-author Giorgia Aiello, (2020). This book was publlished in Italian in 2023: ‘La Comunicazione Visiva’ (il Mulino), and we have finished the second edition which should be out in 2027.

During 2020–2022 I led the AHRC-funded Tim Hetherington Collection and Conflict Imagery Research Network, in partnership with the Imperial War Museum. We held public engagement workshops and brought together international photographers, reporters and film-makers, in addition to scholars and interested members of the public, to discuss Tim’s legacy as a film-maker and photographer.

Spaces of War: War of Spaces (Bloomsbury, 2020) is a co-edited book with my fellow Media, War and Conflict journal editors. The book provides a rich, international and multi-disciplinary engagement with the convergence of war and media through the conceptual lens of 'space'.

Responsibilities

• Director of Research and Innovation for the School of Media and Communication

Research interests

My research interests cover a range of subjects across media and communication studies, including:

• war and the media
• representations of the military and veterans
• visual communication and photojournalism
• visual media activism, political communication
• visual research methods

I was a named Co-Investigator on Katrin Voltmer’s European Commission FP7 project, ‘Media, Conflict and Democratisation’ (MeCoDEM) exploring the interplay between the media and conflicts that accompany transitions to democracy. This project ran from March 2014–January 2017 involving eight international partner universities, with the Leeds team responsible for overall management of the project and research design. Working papers are published on the MeCoDEM website.

Along with Aleks Krstic and Giorgia Aiello, I published a paper from this project entitled 'Visualising the politics of appearance in times of democratisation: An analysis of the 2010 Belgrade Pride Parade television coverage', published in the European Journal of Cultural Studies.

My research projects have explored the representation of war, soldiering and veteranhood. I have studied the Imperial War Museum’s exhibitions and also worked with the museum to explore the contested narratives about conflict, and how cultural memories of wars are constructed in their exhibtitions and collections. This has involved holding workshops and focus groups with veterans and other museum visitors, to explore how audiences respond to visual media and other artefacts in the museum context.

My publications on visual politics have explored the visibility and visuality of protest and activism, such as on the protest imagery of Pussy Riot, the visibility of protest at Thatcher’s funeral, or the way in which Twitter users responded to the death of Jo Cox MP in sharing images of solidarity and political belonging.

Primary investigator (PI)

• The Tim Hetherington collection and conflict imagery network

Qualifications

• PhD: Visually Framing the 2003 Iraq Invasion in British Press Photography
• MA Latin American Studies
• BA Politics and Communication Studies

Professional memberships

• Co-convenor for the Political Studies Association's Media and Politics specialist group
• Member of MeCCSA (Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association
• Member of ICA (International Communication Association)
• AHRC Peer Review College member

Student education

In the School, I teach across political communication, visual communication, research methods, and war and media.

Research groups and institutes

• Political Communication

Current postgraduate researchers

• Ziye Zang
• Chunghui Chuang
• Harry Stone