Dr Savannah Dodd: Archival Interfaces: An ethnographic study of photography archives in post-conflict Northern Ireland

In Fellows by General Account

NINE DTP Postdoctoral Fellow: 2024-25

  • Queen’s University Belfast
  • School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Politics
  • [email protected]

I am an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast’s School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Politics. My focus is in visual  anthropology, with a specialisation in representational ethics, narrative construction, and photography theory, practice, and materiality, especially as they relate to political and religious conflict. My PhD research focused on contemporary archival practices of collecting and managing photographs of Troubles-era Northern Ireland. 

 Photography archives play a significant role in shaping how we remember history. In post-conflict contexts where there is no agreed narrative, such as Northern Ireland, these archives are contested spaces that leave a powerful legacy. My research examined contemporary archival practices of collecting and managing photographs of Troubles-era Northern Ireland. Through this research, I gained insights into the archival ecosystem in post-conflict Northern Ireland. I also gained insights into the societal and ethical implications of archiving photographs of contested histories, especially when those photographs illustrate traumatic events. These research findings could have far reaching benefits for archivists, photographers, scholars, and societies coming out of conflict. 

During this fellowship, I will undertake engagement and dissemination activities to share my PhD research with a range of audiences, both within and outside of academia. I have three primary aims: to disseminate my research through publications; to attend conferences to share my research findings with other scholars; and to organise events for archivists, policymakers, community organisations, and academics that contribute contemporary research and practice.

Alongside my work as an academic, I am also the Founder and Director of the Photography Ethics Centre. In this role, I previously held an ESRC-funded Practitioner Appointment at the Queen’s University Belfast Centre for Creative Ethnography during which I conducted research about how professional photographers think about and practice ethics. The results of this research project were published in a PDF report, as a podcast episode, and in an article for The Conversation: