Antigoni Memou profile

Dr Antigoni Memou

Course leader of BA Photography

Course Leader

Department of Architecture & Visual Arts , School Of Arts And Creative Industries

Dr Antigoni Memou is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Architecture and Visual Arts. After a first degree in Archaeology and Art History at the University of Athens (Greece), she completed her MA in Modern and Contemporary Art at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton) and her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has previously taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art, at Nottingham Trent University and in the MA programmes in Photography and Contemporary Art at the Sotheby's Institute of Art in London.

Areas Of Interest

  • The history and theory of photography
  • Documentary and photojournalism
  • Socially engaged art practices
  • Archives and visual memory
  • Art institutions and critical curatorial practices
  • New technologies in art, globalisation and digital culture
  • Social movements, environmentalism and visual activism
  • Latin American art
  • Migration, refugee crisis and visual culture
  • Postcolonial and critical theory
Antigoni Memou profile

OVERVIEW

Dr Antigoni Memou is senior lecturer in Visual Theories at the School of Arts and Creative Industries. After a first degree in Archaeology and Art History at the University of Athens (Greece), she completed her MA in Modern and Contemporary Art at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton) and her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has previously taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art, at Nottingham Trent University and in the MA programmes in Photography and Contemporary Art at the Sotheby's Institute of Art in London.

External roles

Antigoni is a member of the Association of Art Historians and a member of the Organising Committee of the research seminar Marxism In Culture. She is a member of the Global Nominations Panel for the Prix Pictet (The Global Award in Photography and Sustainability ) and a nominator for First PhotoBook Award, New Media Space, Science Museum, London. 

She has been previously an Associated Researcher in the European Protest Movements’ Network and she has acted as a reviewer for book manuscript in Bloomsbury Academic (Dec. 2015); the peer-reviewed academic journals: Photography and Culture (Jan. 2016); Visual Anthropology (June 2015); History of Photography (July 2013); Photographies (March 2012); Theory, Culture and Society (May 2010) (Special issue on 'Photography and the State'); the Czech National Grant for the Arts (Aug. 2013) and the 36th Macromarketing Conference, College of William and Mary Williamsburg, Virginia, USA, Stream: Art, Culture and Markets. (Feb 2011)

  • Member of the Organising Committee of the research seminar Marxism In Culture (Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London, UK) (2009-today)
  • Member of the Nomination Panel, Kyoto Prize for 2018 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy ("Arts (Painting, Sculpture, Craft, Architecture, Photography, Design", June 2017).
  • Member of the Nomination Panel, First PhotoBook Award, New Media Space, Science Museum, London (2013-today).
  • Member of the Global Nominations Panel, Prix Pictet (The Global Award in Photography and Sustainability)(2013-today).
  • Professional Member of the Association of Art Historians (AAH) (2007-today)
  • Associated Researcher in the European Protest Movements' Network (01 June 2006-30 Dec 2010)
  • Manuscript Reviewer for: Intellect (Dec 2018); Verso (Oct 2018); Bloomsbury Academic (Dec 2015 & Sept 2018); Routledge (Aug 2017 & Nov 2017).

CURRENT RESEARCH

Antigoni is the author of 'Photography and Social Movements' published by Manchester University Press in 2013. She has published in the academic journals Third Text, Photographies, Philosophy of Photography and Ephemera and she has contributed book chapters to edited collections.

She has presented her research in numerous international academic conferences including the Association of Art Historians Annual Conference (2007 & 2010), where she also co-convened sessions ('Relocations: Photography Within, Across, and Outside the Museum since the 1970' in 2008 and 'In and Out of History: Media and Politics in Latin America'  in 2011). She has been an invited speaker at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University in Istanbul (Turkey) in 2010 and at the conferences  'Curating Resistance: Aesthetics and Ethics in Social Movement' at the  University of Essex in 2010 and 'The French Connection: New Perspectives on French Contemporary Art Across Discipline' at Cambridge University in 2008. In 2012, she was invited to contribute to the 'Art and Globalisation Talks' at Stills Gallery in Edinburgh and in 2014, she was invited to present on Realism at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh as part of the talks: Keywords: A (Polemical) Vocabulary of Contemporary Art.

Conferences, symposia, seminars

2023

  • 'Composite Images' and Counter-Forensics', Conference: Agents of Concern: Images and Empathy, PXL-MAD, School of Arts, Hasselt, Belgium, 16-18 Nov, 2023.
  • Roundtable Discussion with Oliver Ressler, Noel Douglas, Lena Reisner part of Oliver Ressler: Barricading the Ice Sheets exhibition, The ShowRoom, 20 April 2023.  
  • 'Images and Counter-Images of Migration', Seminar: Culture, Power and Politics Spring Programme co-organised by Debra Shaw, Katharina Uhe, Jeremy Gilbert and the Photobook Cafe. 10 May 2023.  
  • ‘Atrocious Images’: On Victimhood, Empathy and Counter-Forensics, Summer Institute of Cultural Trauma (Organized by the University of Zagreb), Inter University Centre, Dubrovnik, Croatia,  19 April-06 May 2023. [By Invitation]

2022

  • Roundtable Discussion with Michael Chanan, Esther Leslie, Mike Wayne, 'From Printing to Streaming: Cultural Production under Capitalism', Historical Materialism Conference, SOAS, London, 10-13 November 2022.
  • 'Counter-Images and Spaces of (In)Visibility in Forensic Oceanography's Projects', Conference: Levels of Life: Photography, Imagining and the Vertical Perspective, Photographers' Gallery and London College of Communication, 30 June-2 July 2022.

2020

  • 'Remembering Her 1968: The events of May '68, Images of Women and the Archive’, Expert Meeting: The Visual Memory of Protest, University of Utrecht, Utrecht 20-22 May 2020. (Rescheduled for January 2021 due to Covid19 crisis.) [By Invitation]
  • Roundtable Discussion: The Aesthetics of Global Protest, Loughborough University, 27 March 2020. (To be rescheduled due to Covid19 crisis). [By Invitation]

2019

  • ‘Activist Images in the Global Image Economy’, International Interdisciplinary Conference: Activist Images and the Dissemination of Dissent, Tel Aviv University, 11-13 June, 2019. [By Invitation]
  • ‘Images of Solidarity: 1968, Global Movement and Forgotten Alliances’, International Interdisciplinary Conference: The Radical Sixties, University of Brighton, 28-29 June 2019.  
  • 'Marcelo Brodsky, 1968: The Fire of Ideas' Symposium, Ffotogallery, Cardiff, 21 May 2019. [By Invitation]

2018

  • ‘Art and Activism after 1968’, Seminar, MA in Photography, Royal College of Art, 3 December 2018. [By Invitation]
  • ‘Photography as Border, the ‘Refugee Crisis,’ and the Rise of the Alt-Right’, Conference: Photography in Academic Research: Images in the Post-Truth Era, Birkbeck, University of London, 6-8 September 2018.
  • Roundtable Discussion with Marcelo Brodsky, Gideon Mendel, Oliver Ressler, Artem Loskutov and Christine Eyene, part of the Summer of Photography: Resist! The 1960s Protests, Photography and Visual Legacy, Bozar, Brussels, Belgium, 26th June 2018. [By Invitation]
  • ‘The Visual Legacies of May ’68: Forgotten Alliances, Moments of ‘Resocialisation’ and Global Dimensions’, Conference: Other ‘68s: Lineages and Legacies of May ’68, University of Nottingham, U.K. 11-12 May 2018.
  • ‘Photography and Globalisation,’ Lecture at Sotheby’s Institute of Art (MA in Contemporary Art), London, U.K., 4 May 2018. [By Invitation]

2017

  • ‘La Beauté Est Dans La Rue’: Protest and Radical Visual Narratives’, Interdisciplinary Conference: The Revolutionary Imaginary: Visual Culture in an Age of Political Turbulences, National Gallery of Vilnius, Vilnius, Lithuania, 30 November -1 December 2017.
  • ‘Images of the Refugee Crisis and the Media’s Production of Fear’, Interdisciplinary Colloquium: Borders, Detours & Contingencies, Session: Challenging Borders, University of Innsbruck, Austria, 29-31 March 2017.
  • ‘May ’68: Visual Documents, Institutional Framings and Memory’, IWK (Institute für Wissenschaft und Kunst), Vienna, Austria, 27 March 2017. [By Invitation]
  • ‘Critical Notes on Photography and the ‘Refugee Crisis’, Symposium: The ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Images: Beyond the Humanitarian and the Media, University of East London, London, 14th March 2017.
  • ‘Photography and Globalisation,’ Lecture at Sotheby’s Institute of Art (MA in Contemporary Art), London, U.K., 4 May 2017. [By Invitation]

2016

  • ‘May ’68 and its Visual Legacy’, International Conference: Revolutions, Records and Rebels, V&A, 4 November 2016. [By Invitation]
  • ‘A Borderless Regime of Images’, Summer School: Border Regimes: Confrontations, Configurations, Transpositions, Organised by Walter Benjamin Kolleg, Graduate School of Humanities, University of Bern, Kandersteg, Switzerland, 4-9 September 2016.  
  • ‘Photography in Crisis: On Ethics, Migration and the Still Image’, International Conference: Crossing Borders, Cooperative Institute for Transnational Studies and the University of Aegean (Laboratory EKNEXA, Department of Sociology), Lesvos, Greece 7-10 July, 2016. [By Invitation]

2015

  • 'A Dissident Museum? Counter-Narratives within the Contemporary Museum', International Conference: Politics, State Power and the Making of Art History, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 18 - 19 June, 2015.
  • 'Global Photography: Notes on the 'Documentary Turn' in Contemporary Art', International Conference: Situating Global Art, InterArt Research Programme (Free University of Berlin) Berlin, 12-14 February, 2015.

2014

  • 'Photography and Realism', Keywords: A (Polemical) Vocabulary of Contemporary Art, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 7 October 2014. [By Invitation]
  • Panel Event: 'What is Photography?', Free Range, Truman Brewery, London, 21 June 2014. [By Invitation]

2012

  • 'Green Alternatives/Conflicting Representations,' International Conference: Eco-images: Altering Environmental Discussions and Political Landscapes, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, 18-19 April 2012
  • 'Contesting Globalisation: Allan Sekula's "Waiting for the Tear Gas"', Art and Globalisation Talks, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, 15 March 2012.  [By Invitation]

2011

  •  'Bernd and Hilla Becher,' Seminar at Sotheby's Institute of Art (MA in Contemporary Art), London, UK, 5 October 2011. [By Invitation]

2010

  • 'The Düsseldorf School of Photography,' Seminar at Sotheby's Institute of Art (MA in Contemporary Art), London, UK, 28 October 2010. [By Invitation]
  • 'Carnival Against Capital': From the Street to the Archive, Symposium: Curating Resistance: Aesthetics and Ethics in Social Movement, University of Essex, UK, 27 October 2010. [By Invitation]
  • 'Photography in May '68', Marxism in Culture Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London, 28 May 2010.
  • 'Rethinking May '68: Photography and Memory', Seminar at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey, 17 May 2010. [By Invitation]
  • 'A Conflict of Representations: Photography and the Internet in the Zapatista Struggle', Session Title: Supplementary Conflicts: Domesticities and Life Histories in Wartime, 36th Association of Art Historians' Annual Conference, University of Glasgow, UK, 15-17 April 2010.
  • 'Thinking about Protest through Images', EU Workshop, Centre for American Studies, University of Heidelberg, Germany, 18-20 February 2010.

2009

  • 'Photography and Counter-Globalisation in the Contemporary Art World', Seminar at Sotheby's Institute of Art (MA in Photography), London, UK, 2 March 2009. [By Invitation]

2008

  • 'May 1968 in Paris: Student Movement, Photography and Memory', Summer School: Confronting Cold War Conformity: Peace and Protest Cultures in Europe, 1945-1989, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, 18-25 August 2008.
  • 'Photographs of May 1968 in the Contemporary Museum: A Note on Politics and Aesthetics', International Conference: The French Connection: New Perspectives on French Contemporary Art Across Disciplines, Cambridge University, UK, 24-26 July 2008. [By Invitation]

2007

  • 'The Student Movement of May 1968: Activist Photography, Self Reflection and Antinomies', Session Title: 1968: Activist Art and Its Legacies, 33rd Association of Art Historians' Annual Conference, University of Ulster, Belfast, UK, 12-14 April 2007.
  • 'When It Bleeds, It Leads: Press, Photography and Ideology in the Anti-globalisation Movement' (Genoa 2001), Marie Curie Conference and Training Series: Designing a New Life: Aesthetics and Lifestyles of Political and Social Protest, University of Zurich, Switzerland, 7-10 March 2007.
  • Introduction to the documentary film 'Crossroads' (2006), Marie Curie Conference, University of Zurich, Switzerland, 7-10 March 2007.
  • 'The Student Movement of May 1968: Activist Photography, Self- Reflection and Antinomies', AAH conference preview seminar, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK, 16 March 2007.

2006

  • 'Reclaim the Streets: Social Protest, Photojournalism and Activist Photography', International Conference: Citizenship(s): International Congress on Discourses and Practices, University Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal, 28 June - 1 July 2006.
  • 'Death in Genoa: Notes on Photography, Press and Representation', International Conference: Photography, Power and the Institution, Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies, University of Durham, UK, 8 June 2006. [By Invitation]
  • 'Che Lives  in the Anticapitalist Movement', World Art Postgraduate Symposium, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, 27 May 2006.
  • 'Reclaim the Streets: Social Protest, Photojournalism and Activist Photography', Modern and Contemporary Research Seminar, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK, 20 March 2006.

PUBLICATIONS

 

Single-Authored Books

Memou, A. (2013) Photography and Social Movements: From the Globalisation of the Movement (1968) to Movement Against Globalisation (2001), Manchester: Manchester University Press. (ISBN978-0-7190-8742-4)

Reviewed by:

  • Tom Snow, 'Visual Politics', Review 31, 2014.
  • Larne Abse Gogarty, Philosophy of Photography, 5:1, 2014.
  • Tity de Vries, Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis, 17:1, 2014. (In Dutch)
  • Davor Konjikušić, Zarez, 396, 20. Studenog 2014. (In Croatian)
  • Douglas Harper, Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers Canadiens de Sociologie 40:2, 2015
  • Duncan Forbes, History of Photography, June 2015

Co-Authored Exhibition Catalogue

  • Memou, A., Eyene, C., Dujardin, P., De Boodt, K. (2018) 'Resist! The 1960s Protests, Photography and Visual Legacy', Belgium: Lannoo.

Articles in referred journals & book chapters

  • Memou, A. (2024) 'The Repressed Visual Legacies of May 68', in K. Shingler and A. Bouzon, The Other 68s, Oxford: Peter Lang.  
  • Memou, A. (2022) 'Photography, Memory and Women in May ’68', in A. Rigney and T. Smits, Visual Memory of Protest, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp.  ISBN: 9789463723275
  • Memou, A. (2020) 'The Repressed Visual Legacies of May 68', in K. Shingler and A. Bouzon, The Other 68s, Oxford: Peter Lange. [Forthcoming, volume and pages tbc.]
  • Memou, A. (2020) 'Photography, Border and the Fear of the 'Racialised Other', in Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, Vol. 16, Issue 2. Available at: http://liminalities.net/16-2/
  • Memou, A. (2019) 'Forgotten Solidarities in the Atelier Populaire Posters', Art & the Public Sphere, Vol. 8, Issue 1, pp.7-21[DOI: 10.1386/aps_00002_1]
  • Memou, A. (2019) 'Spectacular Images of the 'Refugee Crisis'', Photographies, Vol. 12, Issue 1, pp. 81-97. [DOI: 10.1080/17540763.2018.1501728]
  • Memou, A. (2018) 'Visualising Globalisation in Documenta 11's Exhibition Catalogue', in S. Dornhof, B. Hopfener, B. Lutz, N. Buurman (Eds.), Situating Global Art: Topologies, Temporalities, Trajectories, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld. 
  • Memou, A. (2017) 'Art, Activism and the Tate,' Third Text, Vol. 31, Issue 5-6, pp. 619-631.
  • Memou, A. (2016) 'La Culture est l' Inversion de la Vie.' Frances Stracey, Constructed Situations: A New History of the Situationist International, Philosophy of Photography, Vol. 6, Issue 1, January, pp. 157-161.
  • Memou, A. (2014) 'Revolt in Photos: The French '68 in the Student Press and the Mainstream Media', in K. Fahlenbrach, E. Sivertsen, R. Werenskjold (Eds.), Media and Revolt, Berghahn Books, New York, pp. 147-164.
  • Memou, A. (2013) 'Re-appropriating Che's Image: From the Revolution to the Market and Back Again', Ephemera, Vol. 13, Issue 1, May 2013, pp. 449-451.
  • Memou, A. (2012) 'The Art Photography of Joel Sternfeld and Globalisation', Photographies. Vol. 5, Issue 1, March 2012. pp. 3-18.
  • Memou, A. (2012) 'Photography and Postmodernism', in J. Hacking (Ed.), Photography: the Whole Story, Thames and Hudson, London, pp. 418-425.
  • Memou, A. (2012) 'Photography, Uprising and Conflict', in J. Hacking (Ed.), Photography: the Whole Story, Thames and Hudson, London, pp. 542-549.
  • Memou, A. (2012) 'Photography and Globalisation', in J. Hacking (Ed.), Photography: the Whole Story, Thames and Hudson, London, pp. 550-553.
  • Memou, A. (2011) 'Photography and Memory: Rethinking May '68', Philosophy of Photography, Vol. 3, October, pp. 83-96.
  • Memou, A. (2010) 'When It Bleeds, It Leads: Death and Press Photography in the Anti-capitalist Protests in Genoa in 2001', Third Text, Vol. 24, 3, May 2010, pp. 341-351.
  • Memou, A. (2010) 'John Tagg: Disciplinary Frames: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning', Philosophy of Photography, Vol. 1, February, pp. 109-111.

Interviews and Other Publications

  • Memou, A. (2018) 'European Borders & the Uncontested Visual Narratives of the "Refugee Crisis"', in States of Europe Newspaper, Publication as product of the collaboration between BA in Photography and BA in Journalism students at the University of East London.
  • Memou, A. (2014) 'Fotografija je također oružje' ('Photography Is Also a Weapon'), interviewed by Davor Konjikušić, Zarez, 396, 20, studenog. (In Croatian)


Peer Reviewer for: Silvana editoriale & Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome; 
Intellect; Verso; Bloomsbury Academic; Routledge; History of Photography; 
British Arts Studies; Third Text ; International Political Science Review; Revista de História da Arte; Photography and Culture; Photographies; Visual Anthropology; Gačr Czech Science Foundation (Photography Proposal); 
Theory, Culture and Society (May 2010) (Special issue on ‘Photography and the State’).

MODULES

  • Contextual studies
  • Contemporary photography
  • Research into practice
  • Global photography
  • Dissertation
  • PhD and professional doctorate supervision

Publications

The last four years of publications can be viewed below. 

Full publications list

Visit the research repository to view a full list of publications

Research repository