From the start of the 2025/26 academic year, Professor Gil Pasternak (left) has taken on the role of Director of the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University. Pasternak is Professor of Photographic Cultures and Heritage and serves as the EU and UK Editor for the peer-reviewed journal Photography & Culture. Under his leadership, the Centre is set to continue its tradition of academic excellence while also introducing new public engagement initiatives and interdisciplinary collaborations.
The PHRC remains committed to showcasing cutting-edge research in the field and to increasing opportunities for public learning, participation, and dialogue - it is Pasternak’s intention to expand the Centre's activities further. The PHRC is also in the process of appointing an international PHRC Scientific Advisory Committee - to increase academic collaboration and broaden the inclusivity and reach of the Centre's events and activities.
Programmes
Among the PHRC's new initiatives in 2025/26 is a public-facing online seminar series titled Research Seminars in Photographic Cultures and Heritage. These free-to-attend sessions are delivered via Microsoft Teams and are open to all with prior registration. The programme of talks scheduled for the current season, alongside details and registration links are all available on the PHRC’s website.
The programme for Semester One 2025 includes three talks, all free to register and delivered online:
- 30 October 2025, 5.30pm – Distinguished Professor Emeriti Martha Langford (Concordia University, Canada), “Through Line 1: the ebb and flow of illustration in A History of Photography in Canada, 1839-2010“.
- 27 November 2025, 5.30pm – Dr Pippa Oldfield (Teesside University, UK) and Tom Allbeson (Cardiff University, UK), “Peace Photographies: Rethinking Photojournalism of Armed Conflict”.
- 11 December 2025, 5.30pm – Dr Ana Catarina Pinho (IHA, NOVA University Lisbon / University of Coimbra, Portugal), “The Empire of Fiction: Images and Counter-Images of the Portuguese Dictatorship”.
Some changes are underway that will impact prospective MA students in particular. The distance learning Photographic History MA programme - which is delivered by PHRC staff - has temporarily frozen recruitment while the teaching team revises module structures and assessment methods. Partly, the aim is to better support practitioners looking to develop their photographic practice in direct relation to the study of photographic history and theory. While the relaunch of the programme is pending successful revalidation, it is hoped that recruitment will reopen later in the current academic session, with new students commencing their studies in the 2026/27 academic year.
The PhD programme at PHRC remains unaffected, and the PHRC continues to serve as a vibrant hub for doctoral research in photographic history, broadly defined. Doctoral students at the Centre explore photography and photographs, alongside other materials and processes, both as means of historical documentation and as cultural artefacts, deepening knowledge and understands about the medium’s technological, social, cultural, and political entanglements in the past and the present alike.
Conference
The PHRC will host its annual international conference in 2026, continuing a tradition that began in 2013. The theme for the 2026 conference is Photography's Tacit Knowledge; among other related issues, it will explore the implicit, unspoken, and embodied ways of knowing within photographic practices and histories. The two-day hybrid event will take place on 15–16 June 2026, at De Montfort University in Leicester and online. The call for papers is scheduled to be published in mid-November 2025, with submissions of paper proposals due by January 2026.
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