Dr Tracy Piper-wright
Deputy Head
Biography
I am a multimedia artist with extensive teaching experience in Higher Education. I enjoy working with students on live briefs and exhibition projects and organising collaborations between staff and students. I work across disciplines and enjoy learning from others and sharing skills in workshop settings. As a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, I promote and design innovative teaching and learning in Art and Design and encourage the rich diversity that our subject offers students. I enjoy working in partnership with students to constantly improve and refine teaching opportunities and to keep up to date with fast paced changes in industry and culture.
Teaching and Supervision
I teach on all levels of the BA Photography programme in both studio and contextual modules. I am module leader for Photography Theory (history and contextual module at Level 4), and Collaborative Practice (group exhibition practice module at Level 5), and lead a cross-disciplinary Departmental module at Level 5. The BA Hons Photography programme at Chester encourages the development of a personal creative practice through engagement with a wide range of digital and analogue approaches and the development of a sound critical and contextual background. I also teach on the MA Fine Art and MA Design programmes and lead the Collaborative Design Practice module on the latter.
Research and Knowledge Exchange
My research investigates the culture of photography, in particular its technological developments and everyday use. In this context I repurpose old photographic media and technologies and explore the conventions of amateur photography through working with vernacular archives. In Pursuit of Error (2014-2021) was an ethnographic study of photographic ‘mistakes’ in the work of contemporary photographers and photography culture. The project tested the conventions of photographic representation and proposed an ‘aesthetics of chance’ as a valuable aspect of an embodied artistic practice. My current research expands upon the themes of non-human agency and photographic materiality that emerged through this project in an exploration of place through ‘slow photography’ and sustainable, alternative processes. I have undertaken two interdisciplinary collaborative research projects centred on Arts and Health. From 2013-2015 I was Lead Researcher on Show and Tell, a Digital R&D Fund for the Arts research project funded by Nesta, Arts Council England and the AHRC. This collaborative research project explored how digital technology could be used to develop participation and engagement with the arts for a wider audience. In November 2020 I was invited to join a Special Interest Research Group for Emerging Minds, part of the Cross-Disciplinary Mental Health Network Plus initiative funded by the UKRI. The Social Photography Research Group is an interdisciplinary team drawn from history, psychology and the arts and is investigating the impact of social media photography on young peoples’ mental health. https://emergingminds.org.uk/special-interest-research-groups/