Professor Michelle Henning

Personal Statement

I joined Liverpool University as Chair in Photography in Media in the Communications and Media Department, in September 2019. Previously, I was Professor in Photography and Cultural History at the University of West London, and before that I taught media and cultural studies at Brighton University and the University of the West of England in Bristol. I have also worked as an art director, artist and designer. I completed a BA in Fine Art and Art History at Goldsmiths, University of London, an MA in Social History of Art at the University of Leeds and a PhD by published works at Brighton University.

Since 1994, I have published research on photography, digital media, exhibitions and museums in edited collections and journals, authoring three books: Museums Media and Cultural Theory (Maidenhead: Open University Press 2006), Photography: The Unfettered Image (London: Routledge 2018) and the edited collection Museum Media (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2015, forthcoming in paperback). I have just completed a fourth book, an environmental history of photography, in 2023. My writing has appeared in the journals Digital Culture and Society, History of Photography, Visual Culture in Britain, photographies, New Formations, Victorian Literature and Culture, and Radical Philosophy. My research has been funded by the AHRC and the British Academy, and I sit on the editorial board of photographies journal. My design work includes the record covers of the PJ Harvey albums Let England Shake (2011), The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016) and I Inside the Old Year Dying (2023).

I am interested in supervising research projects in the areas of photography history, photography in contemporary media, and museum studies, especially approaches with a materialist, environmental and theoretical orientation.

Funded Fellowships