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Senior Research Fellow, Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University

Amanda Ravetz is a visual anthropologist with research interests and expertise in the interdisciplinary connections between anthropology and art/design; the theories and practices of observational cinema; and artist development.

In 2012 Amanda was SAR Fellow at the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.
http://www.nfsa.gov.au/research/fellowships-internships/research-fellowships/

During 2014 she is Visiting Fellow at two Australian institutions:
The School of Art and the Humanities Research Centre, Australia National University.
http://hrc.anu.edu.au/HRC2014visitingfellows

and The Centre for Cultural Partnerships, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

Her most recent book Collaboration Through Craft (2013), an edited volume with Alice Kettle and Helen Felcey, offers a challenging new argument for the collaborative power of craft, analysing the philosophies, politics and practicalities of collaborative craft work. Observational Cinema: Anthropology, Film, and the Exploration of Social Life (with Anna Grimshaw), was published by Indiana University Press in 2009. Her edited volume with Anna Grimshaw, Visualizing Anthropology was published by Intellect Books in 2005 and investigates new collaborative possibilities between anthropology and other fields, linked to image-based work. Amanda's films have been screened in the UK, Finland, Latvia, Portugal, Germany, Majorca, USA and India.

Current research projects include:
*Co-I on "Co-producing legacy: What is the role of artists within Connected Communities projects?" (AHRC-funded)
*research associate on Knowing From Inside (PI Tim Ingold, EC funded) http://www.abdn.ac.uk/research/kfi/
*research associate with On the Edge Research at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen http://ontheedgeresearch.org/

Current research interests include expanded notions of drawing in relation to film; artistic epistemologies; improvisation, play and reverie in art and anthropology; and ontologies of creativity.

Amanda trained as a painter at the Central School of Art and Design, London and later completed a doctorate in Social Anthropology with Visual Media at the University of Manchester. Her doctoral research explored the possibilities of image-based media for sensory and environmental anthropology through a study of vision, knowledge and place-making in an English town.

In 2004 after teaching at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Amanda joined MIRIAD at Manchester Metropolitan University on a three year fulltime AHRC Fellowship to pursue research into "Contemporary Convergence of Aesthetics and Ethnography”. In 2007 she was PI for Connecting Art and Anthropology, an AHRC-funded intensive workshop for artists and anthropologists http://www.miriad.mmu.ac.uk/caa/. She has contributed to several research networks in the past including The 4 As (Art, Architecture, Archaeology and Anthropology) convened by Tim Ingold at University of Aberdeen and "Designing Environments for Life" a programme hosted by the Scottish Institute for Advanced Studies http://www.instituteforadvancedstudies.org.uk/Programmes/DesigningEnvironments.aspx

Amanda is on the editorial advisory boards of
Architecture and Culture (Bloomsbury)
Craft and Design Enquiry (ANU Press).

Experience

  • –present
    Senior Research Fellow, Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University