Anthony Downey

Dr Anthony Downey is Professor of Visual Culture, with a specific focus on the Middle East and Global South (Birmingham City University). Anthony's research and teaching focuses on visual culture and practice-based research; inclusive digital methodologies; fairness and governance in Artificial Intelligence (AI), computer vision and machine learning; human rights and international humanitarian law; and post-disciplinary models of knowledge production.

In his role as College Lead for Research, Excellence and Innovation, he supports colleagues in the development of their research capacity and outputs (specifically as it relates to AHRC funding application development and REF research outputs for early career and senior career researchers). 

In his capacity as BCU lead, he is the Cultural and Commissioning Lead on a four-year £2.2 million Arts Humanities Research Council (AHRC, 2021-2025) funded project, where his research focuses on the expansion of educational and cultural provision for people with disabilities in Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian territories, and Jordan. The latter award was preceded by an AHRC Development Award (2019-2021). 

Anthony's teaching focuses on the politics of global contemporary art practices; post- and anti-colonial theory; contemporary research practices and knowledge production in visual culture. Recent and forthcoming publications include Trevor Paglen: Adversarially Evolved Hallucinations (Sternberg Press/MIT Press, 2024); Neocolonial Visions: Algorithmic Violence and Unmanned Aerial Systems (PostScriptUM no. 47, 2023); Khalil Rabah: Falling Forward—Works 1995- 2025 (Sharjah Art Foundation and Hatje Cantz, 2023), and Shona Illingworth: Topologies of Air (Sternberg Press and The Power Plant, 2021). In 2025, he will publish Decolonizing Vision: Artificial Intelligence, Algorithmic Anxieties & the Future of Aerial Warfare (MIT Press, 2025).