The University of Leeds

Faculty Member, Institute of Communications Studies

Lecturer

About

My research focuses on the relationship between visual culture and globalization, with an emphasis on how identities are formed and social and cultural differences are negotiated across cultures and through visual means—including mediated imagery, the urban built environment, travel and tourism, design and branding, material culture and consumption.

In my work I privilege a critical cultural perspective on issues of power and cultural production in advanced capitalism, with an interdisciplinary approach that spans semiotics, cultural studies, sociocultural anthropology, phenomenology and critical discourse analysis.

From 2011 to 2015 my research project "Globalization, Visual Communication, Difference" will be supported by a Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant from the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013).

Alongside this research, I am currently working on a book manuscript based on my ethnographic fieldwork among policy-makers, designers, photographers and curators in the context of visual communication projects regarding key cultural dimensions of European integration. The manuscript is provisionally titled "Visions of Europe: Visual Communication, Identities and the European Union".

In addition, I am a 2010 recipient of the Urban Communication Foundation Research Incentive Award and a co-director of the Urban Archives project (http://www.urbanarchives.org), which produces and promotes visual research about the city through a publicly available digital database. I am also a 2008 recipient of the U.S.-based National Communication Association Critical and Cultural Studies Division’s Outstanding Dissertation Award.

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