Practice
Our research
The practice research group is interested in how practice-led research can produce innovative answers and creative outcomes to a range of media and communication questions. The group embraces an interdisciplinary approach to the production of knowledge, in which photographic practice, film making, sequential imagery, and archival exploration, is performed symbiotically with established forms of academic writing. We aim to contribute to the current debates surrounding academic practice, and what makes a meaningful epistemological encounter.
The group is keen to incorporate practice-led research in their own teaching delivery; a process that invigorates the curriculum experience for both staff and students. Also, the practice research conducted by the group applies methodologies that ensures effective impact amongst various external partners and the public domain. For this reason, we make the case that practice-led research is often validated by its primary source material, the so-called: “lived experience”.
The key practice research disciplines / themes explored by the group include:
• new forms of photographic practice and photograph(ies), incorporating digital and analogue approaches that interrogate representations, socio-political culture, place, and the archive.
• approaches to visual methods that investigate the Ai revolution.
• how film, moving image, and sequential imagery research can be a catalyst for change in contemporary culture, with the potential to produce structures that facilitate and influence everyday decisions and experiences.
• exploration of different archives to produce new critical insights that might contest existing narratives about people and history.
• a joint theme for the group in relation to the 2028 REF submission is the ‘environment’.
Impact and engagement
The Practice Research group members have worked on a heterogeneous range of projects to develop and revitalise the notion of practice in an academic context. Here is a thematic sample: the representation of post-industrial landscapes and forgotten working-class histories, re-photography to explore the transformation of cities over time, multimedia experimentation that creates moving montages of hyper realities, the societal impact of super hero comics and graphic novels, engaging video essays that re-present feminist discourses associated with female victimhood in the horror genre, artisan practices in relation to the forgotten craftspeople impacted by technological advances, and lastly, the archive as a repository for forgotten lives and lost artefacts. We are focussed on how practice (in its broadest sense) and the methods used, can be influential, in civic and culture life.
Research projects
At present, the Practice Research group has established partnerships with both Antwerp University, the Department of Communication, and the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Centre (ViDi), and Winchester School of Art, Southampton University. Please access the link below to watch a recording of The Developing Practice Research Symposium 29th March 2023, featuring a Keynote speech, 5 presentations, and a Q/A between our Practice Research Group and Southampton’s Practice Research group. Watch the Practice Symposium here.
Academic team
Visit our profiles for more information about our academic team.
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Dr Lynn Wray |
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Contact
For further information contact Dr Jim Brogden, Director of Practice Research at j.w.brogden@leeds.ac.uk
Media contacts
If you require a media expert, contact the University of Leeds Press Office by calling +44(0)113 343 4031 or by emailing pressoffice@leeds.ac.uk.