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Fiona MacLaren

Senior Lecturer

Nottingham School of Art & Design

Staff Group(s)
Photography

Role

Course Leader, MA Photography 

Fiona currently teaches Visual practice and Critical practice across the undergraduate photography programme. She has contributed to the delivery of the MA Photography course and undertakes project supervision of doctoral research. Her teaching interests are centred on the integral relationship of theory and practice, cross-disciplinary collaboration and practice led research in relation to curricula development.

Research areas

Fiona's research practice uses photography, sound and moving image to explore spatial perception and experience. She is interested in how the cultural, social and political compose and constitute 'landscape' and the contexts and meanings of place. A range of disciplines informs her interests, in particular: architecture, cultural geography, politics and history. This is brought to visual and written works that examine the discourse of space and place, the dialectics of memory and critical narratives of identity and belonging. Recent writing has centred on the agency of memory in relationship to post conflict space and the critical representation of history and place.

Current Projects
Fiona is jointly working on the symposia; Photography and Architecture and will co-curate the forthcoming exhibition in 2015. She established and chairs the research forum Perceptions of Practice; a critical engagement on photography as medium, practice and culture.
Fiona is currently working on a number of photography and film projects including:

  • Spatial Soliloquy
  • Within Dusk
  • Preserve / Reserve

Information for prospective students
Students are welcomed with an interest in the areas outlined above or related fields of inquiry. Current research supervision engages themes of: identity, belonging and narratives of place.

Publications

Book Chapters

MacLaren, F (2013) Post-conflict space: mediating memory and the parameters of identity In: Bandyopadhyay, S. and Garma Montiel , G. (eds.) Territories of Identity: Architecture in the Age of Evolving Globalization Abingdon: Routledge

Conference Papers

MacLaren, F 2010 ‘Memorial Landscapes: space, memory, representation’. Paper presented at the Emerging Landscapes: Between Production and Representation Conference, University of Westminster, London

MacLaren, F 2010 ‘Visual Mediation: Memory, Medium and Representation’. Paper presented at the Conflicting Views: Visual Culture, Conflict and Northern Ireland Conference,
Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin.

MacLaren, F 2009 ‘Reconsidering Visual Aesthetics: mediation & perception in contemporary visual experience’. Paper presented at the Aesthetic Dimension of Visual Culture Conference, DigiLab Academy of Fine Arts, Charles University, Prague

MacLaren, F 2009 ‘Future Past: Mediating Memory & the Parameters of Identity’. Paper presented at the Architectural Design and Global Difference (ADGD): The Multiple Faces of Identity in the Designed Environment Conference Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham

MacLaren, F 2008 ‘The Sensory Encounter: memory, medium, representation’. Paper presented at the Medium as Memory: Experience, Exchange, Representation Conference
School of Journalism & Communications, Carleton University, Ottawa

MacLaren, F 2008 ‘The Space of Forgetting’. Paper presented at the Cultural Memory: Forgetting to Remember/ Remembering to Forget Conference Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Kent, Canterbury

MacLaren, F 2006 ‘Imaging Memory’: Potential Futures from Contested Pasts’. Paper presented at CongressCATH The Afterlife of Memory: Memoria/Historia/Amnesia University of Leeds, Leeds

See all of Fiona MacLaren's publications...