About us
Teaching
Since it was founded in 1987, the Granada Centre has established an international reputation for its practice-based approach to teaching in visual anthropology. It forms part of the Social Anthropology Discipline Area at the University of Manchester and plays the central role in the delivery of the following postgraduate programmes:
MA in Visual Anthropology
The flagship one-year taught Master's programme, the MA in Visual Anthropology, now has two pathways:
- Ethnographic Documentary and Film (EDF) gives to particular emphasis to practical film-making
- Ethnographic Documentary and Sensory Media (EDSEM) also includes practical film-making, but in the second semester broadens out to include photography and sound-recording.
An important feature of this programme are the workshops offered by professional practitioners, including the Centre's Honorary Lecturer, the distinguished documentarist Leslie Woodhead.
- Details of the technical training offered on this programme
- Further details and application procedures for the MA
MPhil and Doctoral Research
The Centre also contributes to the delivery of four research degrees:
- MPhil in Ethnographic Documentary (one year),
- PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media (3-4 years)
- PhD in Anthropology, Media and Performance – AMP (3-4 years).
All these programmes involve fieldwork and some element of film-making and/or other practical projects in image-making or sound-recording. Further details and application procedures.
Film-making for Fieldwork: practical short courses
Research
Researchers associated with the Granada Centre are engaged in a broad range of topics that now go far beyond film-making and even beyond the visual, including an active interest in sound and other forms of sensory experience. These researchers include both regular members of the teaching staff as well as associated fellows of various different kinds. Recent research-related developments include:
- Rupert Cox has a British Academy grant to continue acoustic research on the political ecology of military aircraft noise from US bases in Okinawa and a Wellcome Arts Trust grant to develop a sound-art and film-based gallery installation about the last farmer protesting the runaway of Tokyo's Narita airport. This will be exhibited at the Whitworth art gallery in 2011and published as a DVD and art-book by Gruenrekorder.
- Paul Henley published The Adventure of the Real, a major study of the work of Jean Rouch, with Chicago University Press in January 2010. See The University of Chicago Press
- Andrew Irving is developing a series of art/anthropology research projects in New York and Africa, supported by a Wenner Gren grant, exploring how interior dialogues and imaginative lifeworlds mediate social-cultural activities. He and Rupert Cox are editing a multi-media collection by artists and anthropologists to be published by the Centre with Manchester University Press as Beyond Text: critical practices and sensory anthropology.
- Itsushi Kawase, Kyoto University, Japan joined the Centre in April 2010 on a two year postdoc to work on ideas of Intangible Cultural Heritage, with particular reference to the traditional music of East Africa
- Andy Lawrence irecently completed The Lover and the Beloved a film shot in India dealing with Tantric ideas about birth, death and well-being. More details.
- Angela Torresan recently carried out preliminary research for a new project on Lapa, a bohemian/working-class city-centre quarter of Rio de Janeiro
- Richard Werbner recently completed Holy Hustlers, the fourth in a series of films about Christian charismatics and faith-healing movements in Botswana distributed by the Royal Anthropological Institute. He is currently working on a new book that will integrate this film with a textual ethnography, provisionally entitled Holy Hustlers, Schism and Prophecy.
For more details about all these projects, visit the projects webpage. This research activity is supported by
- a regular series of seminars hosted by the Granada Centre, Fieldwork and Filmwork and by occasional joint workshops with the Drama DA, Visual Dialogues and At First Sight
- the Film Library, containing over 2000 titles, recently supplemented by the acquisition of a collection of Masterworks of Ethnographic Cinema made possible by a grant from the Granada Foundation.
Global and local networks
The Granada Centre plays a leading role in the international network of visual anthropology.
- It distributes a selection of over 100 films produced by students, staff and research fellows through the Royal Anthropological Institute. A show-reel of recent student work is available from janet.a.smith@manchester.ac.uk
- On three occasions (1990, 1992 and 2007), it has acted as the host of the International Ethnographic Film Festival . The proceedings from the conference that accompanied the 2007 festival will be published in 2010 by Manchester University Press as Beyond Text: critical practices and sensory anthropology.
- Granada Centre staff have given seminars, film-screenings or run workshops all over the world and have advised in the established of similar Centres in both China and Brazil.
At a more local level, the Granada Centre has collaborated on a diverse range of different projects with community groups and other local partners in the Manchester region, including:
- Northwest Film Archive where the Granada Centre deposits copies of all the materials that students shoot in the Northwest of England.
- The Kath Locke Resource Centre in Hulme in the making of We Are Born to Survive, a biographical film about the black community activist Kath Locke.
- Bolton Museum, in making a film for an exhibition about weddings (2006)
- Whitworth Art Gallery in organizing and curating a sound-art exhibition, 'Castaways' (2007), created by anthropologist and sound artist Steven Feld and visual artist Virginia Ryan.
- Manchester Histories Festival (2009). Granada Centre students shot 'vox-pop' interviews for use on the festival website.
- Manchester Deaf Centre in making a film about deaf culture (2010).
