Research
Title: Exposing Violence: Women Using Experimental Photography to Confront Gendered Violence
Author: Dr. Elizabeth Ransom
Year: 2026
Institution: Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon, The University of Mississippi
Resources: To learn more about this research please visit The University of Mississippi website | To learn more about the Women of Photography Conference-a-thon please visit the Women of Photography website
Abstract: This paper analyses experimental photographic works addressing gender‑based violence, created either by survivors or by artists who foreground women’s oppression. Using methods such as cyanotype, surface interventions, and lumen printing, these works visualize women’s narratives and expose structures of violence. Drawing on feminist frameworks by Françoise Vergès and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, the paper shows how alternative processes can challenge conventional representations of abuse and offer platforms for survivor voices. This research highlights case studies whose projects address femicide, domestic abuse, and other gender-based violence.
Additional Information: Blog post coming soon.
Title: Visualising transnationality: How women transcribe the experience of migration using alternative photographic processes
Author: Dr. Elizabeth Ransom
Year: 2019 -2025
Degree: Practice-Based PhD Research
Institution: University for the Creative Arts
Resources: Download thesis from UCARO | Download Portfolio of artistic practice
Abstract:
This thesis explores the lived experience of transnationality for those who identify as women and those who identify as immigrants through the visual language of alternative photographic processes. As transnationality involves a spectrum of experiences, this research specifically investigates place attachment, nostalgia, memory, and multiplicity in relation to identity and how these key themes are transcribed using experimental approaches to photography such as soil chromatography, photograms, film soup and cyanotypes.
Gender plays a vital role in the experience of transnationality from motivations for migrating to the impact of migration on definitions of self. If we do not take gender into consideration when investigating the transnational experience, then we disregard the valuable conditions that influence hybridity and ignore the challenges women face through migration.
This PhD inserts women’s voices into discourse surrounding transnationality through a mixed methodological approach. By combing interviews and case studies from women who identify as having a transnational identity with autoethnographic research from my own experience of migration I showcase a diverse range of perspectives. I also use practice-based research that involves the creation of three bodies of work all of which use alternative photographic processes to visualise the emotional landscape of migration. This research foregrounds women's narratives and will contribute to the discourse surrounding transnationality and to photographic practice that deals with migration.
In addition to investigating the lived experience of transnationality my research explores how women are using alternative photographic methods to translate this experience. Examples are drawn from my own artistic practice including three key bodies of work Immigration Day (2019), The Woods (2021-2022), and Homesick (2021) to reflect upon my ongoing and continuously changing understanding of what it means to be an immigrant.
Title: Revisions: Research Report
Author: Elizabeth Ransom and Anna Fox
Year: 2024
Institution: Fast Forward: Women in Photography, University for the Creative Arts
Resources: Restricted Access Document | To learn more about this research please visit the Fast Forward: Women in Photography Website
Abstract:
The purpose of the Revision: Research Report is to investigate the representation of female photographers in the Victoria and Albert Museum Photography Collection through the attribution of gender and interviews with key museum figures. This research will support Fast Forward: Women in Photography in developing future grant applications, as well as inform future research endeavours at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Research was carried out over a period of three months, from April to June 2024. This report analyses how women’s photographic practice has been acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum since its inception. This involves investigating works acquired by public funding, gifts, and departmental budgets as well as two key sources of acquisitions funding currently being utilised in the photography department including acquisitions made by The Parasol Foundation Trust and the Photographic Acquisitions Group both of which I will discuss later in this report. Data collection was conducted of contemporary acquisitions in the eight years leading up to the viral social movement #Metoo in 2017 and the eight years after #Metoo to establish the impact of the global social movement on collecting habits. The research undertaken for this project was done so with an awareness of the way in which the social category of ‘women’ intersects with class, race, sexuality, gender identity, disability, and migration status.
Additional Information: The report is for in house use and was shared with the Victoria and Albert Museum, Fast Forward, and the University for the Creative Arts Research Office.
