Alumni testimonies
Since the MA in Visual Anthropology was launched in 1988, over 300 students have passed through this and other programmes offered by the Granada Centre. Here, a small selection of these graduates recall their time with us.
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Sarah Pink (MA Visual Anthropology 1989-90)
Sarah is Professor of Social Sciences at Loughborough University and has a remarkable academic publications record: her single author books alone include The Future of Visual Anthropology (2006), Doing Visual Ethnography (2007), Doing Sensory Ethnography (2009), and her newest, Advances in Visual Methodology. Most of her research involves the use of audiovisual media, and a multisensory approach to academic scholarship and research practice, with applied implications wherever possible. More details.
"The MA in Visual Anthropology has been central in shaping my theoretical, methodological and practical work as an anthropologist. It provided me with a starting point from which to develop ways of collaborating with research participants to generate anthropological ways of knowing with the camera, as well as encouraging me to interrogate the visual through theoretical scholarship".
Catarina Alves (MA Visual Anthropology 1991-92)
Catarina is currently a leading figure in Portuguese documentary and a partner in the production company that she co-founded, Laranja Azul (Blue Orange), through which she has made many films, both as director and executive producer. More details. She is currently finishing a film about the Portuguese ethnographic film-maker António Campos whilst at the same time writing a PhD on Portuguese rural cinema in the 1970s at the Universidade Nova, Lisbon.
"The Granada Centre experience was very important to me, particularly as a personal experience. Sharing with your collegues what you learn and discovering for yourself the pleasure of working with others was fundamental. Essentially, the seeds of everything that I have later come to learn about making films - from the research, through the shooting, to the editing - were all sown during my time at the Granada Centre."
Charlie Clay (MA in Visual Anthropology 1991-92)
Since leaving the Granada Centre, Charlie has managed to survive the ups and downs of UK television, directing in all areas of factual programming, from the docu soap to undercover current affairs, with many observational films in between. In February 2011, he told us that after 7 years of freelance series producing, mainly for the BBC (Gears and Tears, Trawlermen, Crisis on Jimmy's Farm), he had started a new job executive producing at Fresh One Television, owned by Jamie Oliver, the celebrated TV chef.
"The Granada Centre was an excellent grounding for me - the opportunity to explore the theoretical side of ethnographic film making while getting heaps of invaluable hands on experience; producing, directing, editing and most importantly, shooting . I remember a year of learning from my mistakes and the fun of working alongside a stimulating and well motiviated group of peers. Happy days that gave me the basic skills and confidence needed to go on and carve out a career factual television".
Gavin Searle (MA Visual Anthropology 1993-94)
Gavin is a documentary director who has shot more than 35
documentaries for British television. He has plumbed both the
heights and the depths of this world and has filmed in more than 20 countries worldwide. Most recently, he directed programmes in the award-winning series, Tribe (BBC) and Meet the Natives (Channel 4) and the critically acclaimed Welcome to Lagos (BBC).
"The MA is possibly the most fun bit of education I have ever done. Aside from learning the basics of hands-on film-making, it is a very different way of doing anthropology ... you really have to engage with people in imaginative and demanding ways. It's applied anthropology at its best".
Sylvia Caiuby Novaes (Postdoctorate 1993-1995)
Sylvia is full Professor of Anthropology at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP). After 18 months at the Granada Centre, she went back to Brazil to set up LISA – Laboratório de Imagem e Som em Antropologia , where she has since supervised many students and researchers doing anthropological audiovisual work.
“My experience in Manchester made possible an old dream: to incorporate a new language – the audiovisual – in the anthropological discourse. It was really exciting to realize on my return just how much our students were also longing for this. Today, LISA has become a recognized centre for audiovisual anthropology and for sure Granada Centre has had a great deal to do with this”.
Carlos Yuri Flores (PhD Social Anthropology with Visual Media 1994-1999)
The first to complete the PhD with Visual Media, Carlos now teaches anthropology and ethnographic film-making in Mexico. He continues his doctoral work on community video projects in Guatemala and now also in Mexico, among indigenous groups and others. He is currently producing a series of films on Mayan Law in Guatemala in collaboration with local indigenous authorities. In January 2011, he wrote to us:
"Before coming to the Granada Centre, I had worked as a journalist and anthropologist. It was the ideal space for a creative unification of both fields, helping me to develop an approach based on the production of films together with the subjects in order to obtain results that were meaningful both to me as an anthropologist and to the communities I work with. It gave me the most important professional training in my life".
Alex Steinitz (MA Visual Anthropology 1995-96)
Alex is a Documentary Producer at the BBC in London. He has made many different prime time documentaries for different BBC channels, most recently for the 'Horizon' science strand.
'The Granada Centre experience provided me with a hugely important practical grounding in all aspects of making documentary. Something that gave me an immediate head start when I started working in mainstream television production. But perhaps more important than that was the philosophical & ethical grounding it gave me in why to make a film at all.'
Julie Moggan (MA Visual Anthropology 1999-2000)
After further training at the National Film and Television School, Julie has worked as a director and camera operator on documentaries for Channel 4 and BBC. She recently completed her first feature length documentary,Guilty Pleasures, a comedy about romance novel enthusiasts and the universal quest for true love. The film premiered in the New British Cinema section of the London Film Festival in November 2010. It has since been shown at other international film festivals and bought by broadcasters around the world.
"After studying anthropology as an undergraduate at Manchester, the MA gave me a brilliant practical grounding in all aspects of documentary film-making. Learning not only how to research and direct my own films, but also how to shoot and edit them has proven to be a huge asset in my working life after GCVA. What I’ve come to appreciate most is the strong anthropological sensibility the course fostered in me".
Gema Allen (MA Visual Anthropology 2000-01)
Gema is a feature film producer based in Buenos Aires and is currently producing Victor Kossakovsky's new film, Antipodas. She wrote to us in March 2010:
"We're in the middle of editing and it's just a fantastic film. We hope it will be in Venice later this year. Also, I'm developing a great project called The Shark's Eye at EURODOC. The project is an observational film about a boy who will have his first season shark hunting this year. I started my own production company GEMA FILMS and I'm doing well, full of projects. I always remember the Granada Centre dearly and I'm so very thankful for all the support along those formative years".
Johannes Sjöberg (MA Visual Anthropology 2000-01)
Johannes is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Manchester and director of the new doctoral programme in Anthropology, Media and Performance (AMP). After the MA, Johannes did a PhD in Drama, carrying out fieldwork amongst travestis in São Paulo, Brasil and making Transfiction, an ethnofiction inspired by the methods of Jean Rouch, which has been shown at film festivals around the world.
"The Granada Centre taught me how to best make use of the 'camera pen', realizing the old dream of Alexandre Astruc. With the new digital camera technology in our hands, we could become 'auteurs', independent storytellers of everyday life. We were thrown into the deep end and obliged to create complex stories out of fieldwork relationships. The MA programme forged me for life, on a personal as well as a professional level, and that year gave me a family that (so far) consists of over twenty batches of GC students!"
Julie Milling (MA in Visual Anthropology 2002-03)
After completing the MA, Julie returned to her home town in Denmark. In December 2010, she wrote to us:
"I hope all is well with you and the GCVA, which I often think back to with fond memories! I have been working freelance for a couple of years now on documentary programmes for Danish television. I started out in a small production company in my town, which has now merged with a national production company called STV Mayday, and things have really picked up speed since. Here I am in charge of directing relatively scientifc programs, and at the moment I am working on a series for the Danish Ethics Committe about topics with great ethical dilemmas such as euthanasia, organ donation etc. Really interesting work!"
Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (PhD Social Anthropology with Visual Media 2004-2008)
Since leaving Manchester, Alexandrine has worked on two post-doctoral projects in Canada and has directed Golden Scars (62 mins.), part-funded by the National Film Board and based on her research into Cuban hip hop. She is currently developing two participatory video projects in one of Montréal’s most underprivileged neighborhoods.
"Although I was a PhD student, I participated fully in the MA programme in order to upgrade my practical knowledge of documentary making. It was an incredible experience to be among such motivated students and dedicated staff members who were are all very passionate about ethnographic film. Looking back, I can see how deeply the training I received in the Granada Centre influences my work and research today".
Valentina Bonifacio (MA Visual Anthropology, PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media 2004-09)
Valentina teaches Visual Anthropology at the Universita' Ca' Foscari in Venice, Italy, where she is planning to open a video laboratory. She is currently involved in a video project with Paraguayan women who are temporarily being held in prison.
"My experience at the Granada Centre was extremely effective. After the first year, I was surprised to discover that I felt self-confident enough to shoot and edit a film on my own. My PhD documentary, Casado's Legacy, was accepted in several festivals around the world which was a great experience. Now that I am back to Italy, the things that I learnt at the GC are still inspiring my work".
Alyssa Grossman (MA Visual Anthropology, PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media 2004-10)
Alyssa began a post-doc at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden in March 2011. The post is part of a cross-disciplinary initiative involving four other researchers working on projects related to memory and cultural heritage. She will be building on ideas developed in her doctoral thesis, specifically around interpretations of memory through ethnographic film as exemplified by her doctoral film about memories of Bucharest in the Ceausescu era, In the Light of Memory.
"Incorporating visual media into my doctoral thesis allowed me to take the skills I learned on the MA a few steps further. Because there is no proscribed formula for integrating visual and written material in the PhD, I was able to experiment quite broadly with approaches to shooting, editing, and writing. It was provocative and challenging to work out how I could use filmmaking as an analytical tool to shape, not just reflect, my research process".
Andre Cicalo (PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media, 2005-10)
Andre holds a post-doctoral fellowship at the Latin America Institute, Berlin Free University where he is working on a project about the transnational dimensions of black affirmative action in Brazil. This is based on his doctoral work for which he made the film Memories on the Edge of Oblivion. In January 2011, he wrote to us:
"I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to develop ethnographic film-making skills at the Granada Centre. It was a very engaging process that made me explore my research topic from several different angles and even develop new research interests for the future. I was very satisfied with how fast I progressed with my filming skills, since when I started, I did not even know how to switch on a video camera!"
Jana Carrey (MA Visual Anthropology 2006-07, Sensory Media Pathway)
The founder of Jana Carrey Photography, based in San Francisco, Jana pursues her own conceptual photography projects that marry a social documentary approach with a participant-observation methodology. Focusing on non-profit organizations with a humanitarian mission, her commercial clients range from large health care organizations to NGOs and community-based arts organizations.
"The MAVA was one of the most inspiring educational and creative experiences of my life. Aside from making deep friendships, I grew tremendously during this period. My photographic process is now largely investigative, collaborative and enhanced by my background in anthropology - which deepens my understanding of people and the way we navigate the world. I feel my work is also stronger conceptually thanks to the theoretical grounding in visual culture and media that I received at the Granada Centre."
Austin Paterek (MA Visual Anthropology 2007-08, Film pathway)
Although he plans to do a PhD at some point, since graduating, Austin has worked on several documentary projects for nationwide television in the United States.
In January 2011, he told us:
"I spent my undergraduate career in the United States as the only person that I knew who was interested in topics such as ethnographic film or sensory knowledge. So to be able to walk into the Granada Centre and be surrounded by such a wonderful group of faculty and 19 student peers who shared the same love for visual anthropology was quite amazing... The MAVA degree has been a great asset to me .... I have a strong technical skill set, but I also bring an anthropologist’s perspective to my projects".
Karlia Campbell (MA Visual Anthropology 2009-10, Film pathway)
Karlia came to us after a degree in Economics from McGill University in Canada and 15 years in Communications before returning to study anthropology in Canada and Bolivia. She is currently working with other MAVA graduates on a collective visual project exploring the personal impact of government budget cuts. Shortly after completing the programme, she wrote to us:
"Many people thought it was crazy of me to come back to school at my age ... but then I wouldn't have benefited from the full MAVA experience. I really appreciate how you've given us not only the building blocks, but also the theoretical grounding to be good visual anthropologists ... I know this sounds like gushing, but this year has really changed the way I look at the world. "
Esther Maagdenberg (MA in Visual Anthropology 2009-10, Film pathway)
Esther came to us after a first degree in anthropology in the Netherlands and graduated in 2010 based on a participatory film shot in Trenchtown, the notoriously difficult inner-city area of Kingston, Jamaica. In December 2010, she wrote to us saying that she was making a series of films about young professionals looking for their dream jobs whilst planning to return to Trenchtown to make another film.
"For me, the MAVA program was a chance to realize what kind of films I wanted to make, as well as to learn about how to make them. The many film-making projects that we did during the year were little experiments in which I not only learnt about Visual Anthropology, but also about myself as a filmmaker. It was a really intense year and I enjoyed it so much."