Gary Bratchford

Gary Bratchford is a writer, editor & curator, and an Associate Professor of Photography at Birmingham City University, UK. Gary is also a Researcher in Residence at St Joseph’s University, Macau.

Gary co-edits Visual Studies Journal, Visual Culture in Britian and co-edits the Palgrave Book Series, Social Visualities. Formally president of the International Sociological Association’s Visual Research Group (2016-2021), Gary is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and a nominated Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). In 2023 he was the recipient of the Prosser Award for Innovations in Visual Methods. 

Gary is regular reviewer for journals, publishers and research councils including the Swedish Research Council.

Gary has also been an external examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate courses as well as examining PhD’s as an internal and external examiner for practice and traditional Doctorate.

Supervisions

Gary is the PI for the AHRC Collaborative Doctorial Award (CDA) entitled, 
Co-Creating Collections for Priority and Future Audiences: Socially Engaged Photography and Small to Medium Sized Public Organisations with the Open Eye Gallery Liverpool & Coventry University. 

Gary welcomes PhD enquiries. 

Research

Many of his contributions have been to the field of Visual Studies and the cognate domains of photography, visual sociology and visual methods where he explores the intersections between vision, visibility and the ways in which image-makers engage with these themes in various contexts, scales and geographies. In particular Gary works and researches on projects and themes of:

• Vision, verticality and volume through various contexts and art practices.
• Social practice and visual methods, specifically around notions of co-creation and health/community action.
• Visualizing and visualizations of Gentrification.
• Thinking through these 3 abovementioned practices as modes of Knowledge exchange in the academia and community settings as well as testing out process-based and research informed practice led projects.

Practice Research

In addition to writing, Gary is an advocate of reflexive and process-based practice/research. He uses mixed-methods approaches, including collaborative, longitudinal socially engaged processes and curatorial practices to develop a critical understanding of how practice-based research and visual cultures can engender more inclusive and participatory ways to think though a number of issues including health, community cohesion and knowledge exchange across traditional and non-traditional spaces/platforms.