Dr. Kelly Hussey-Smith
Details
-
College: School of Art
-
Department: School of Art
-
Campus: City Campus Australia
-
kelly.hussey-smith@rmit.edu.au
-
ORCID: 0000-0002-6319-8865
Open to
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
About
Dr Kelly Hussey-Smith is a creative researcher focused on photography as a social practice, the politics of representation, and art education. She is a Senior Lecturer in Photography at the RMIT School of Art.
----
Dr Hussey-Smith is an artist, researcher, and educator with a background in documentary practice and theory, collaboration, art and trauma, social practices, and art and education. She co-leads the Social Practice and Art and Education themes of the Contemporary Art and Social Transformation Research Group (CAST) in the RMIT School of Art.
With a background in documentary photography theory and practice, her research also aligns with the fields of socially engaged art, visual culture, pedagogy, and political theory. Through her co-leadership of the Social Practice and Art and Education CAST research groups, Dr Hussey-Smith regularly collaborates with community and industry and across disciplines to develop research projects that connect the university to local issues and contexts through creative practice. She is currently working on a number of cross-disciplinary research projects in the areas of public pedagogy, community-oriented education, and the labour of care. In 2018 she developed The Photo Lab—a community-oriented education project in Collingwood where undergraduate photography students co-create projects with community partners. Instead of treating collaboration and ethics as peripheral to photography education, The Photo Lab centers these concepts through a community-oriented and relational approach that foregrounds the relational and ethical conditions of collaborative work.
She has published numerous articles in refereed and non-refereed publications and exhibited and published her documentary work nationally and internationally. Most recently she has written several book chapters about the challenges of teaching collaboration and ethics in tertiary institutions, and community-led approaches to collaboration in art education.
Dr Hussey-Smith regularly works with community-led initiatives, advocacy organisations, and industry partners on interdisciplinary research and education projects. Recent and current collaborators include Concentric Curriculum (Bus Projects), Good Cycles, The Nepal Picture Library, Care Leaves Australasia Network, Lotus Place, The Centre for Contemporary Photography, Collingwood College, the National Gallery of Victoria, and The Social Studio.
Research fields
- 360604 Photography, video and lens-based practice
- 3606 Visual arts
- 390105 Environmental education curriculum and pedagogy
- 390303 Higher education
- 3601 Art history, theory and criticism
Supervisor projects
- Youll Know It When You Feel It: developing a trauma integrated framework for long-form contemporary documentary practice
- 22 Apr 2024
- Dark Orange Sinensis: Anti-Ethnographic Approaches to Documentary Photography
- 10 Jan 2024
- An Inconvenient Curve: Unlearning Settler Colonial Representations of the Birrarung
- 14 Dec 2023
- Turning into bad women: Understanding the perception about Bangladeshi Female Migrant workers in the community
- 2 Mar 2023
- Not tame enough
- 4 Jan 2023
- Reimagining War and a New Landscape of Conflict
- 20 Oct 2022
- Through A Glass Darkly: Documentary Photography and the Post-Truth Episteme
- 8 Mar 2022
- A Thousand Different Adventures
- 15 Dec 2020
- Safe Space as Praxis: Creating (Affective) Conditions for World-Building, Care and Futures for Young People in the Creative Arts
- 3 Aug 2019
- Bodies Beyond the Skin: Queer and Camp Inquiries of Australian Landscape Photography
- 17 Aug 2018
Teaching interests
Dr Hussey-Smith teaches studio and theory courses with a focus on praxis. She is interested in how documentary and other social practices contribute to civil dialogue and partnerships. She has spent several years developing pedagogical approaches for community-oriented art education projects that centre community knowledge/s and causes. In 2019 she was awarded an Innovative Teaching Award from The Australian Council of Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) for her work with The Photo Lab and her involvement in the Doing Visual Politics global intensive and network.
She teaches across documentary photography, socially engaged art, and partnered projects.
She has written and delivered several undergraduate and honours courses including:
Expanded Documentary
Social Documentary
Picturing Power
Forms for Encounter and Exchange (with Dr Marnie Badham)
Doing Visual Politics: Creative Practice as Civil Action (with Dr Alan Hill)
Research in Creative Practice (Honours theory course)
The Nurses and Midwives Art Exchange (with Dr Ruth De Souza, Dr Fleur Summers, Dr Mark Edgoose and Professor Grace McQuilten)
Research interests
Visual Arts and Crafts, Art Theory and Criticism
Practice-led research, studio and theory teaching, research supervision, theme leader CAST research group, community and industry partnered projects.
Community and Industry Engagement
Dr Hussey-Smith regularly works with community-led initiatives, advocacy organisations, and industry partners on interdisciplinary research and education projects. Recent collaborators include: The Nepal Picture Library, Care Leaves Australasia Network, Lotus Place, Concentric Curriculum (Bus Projects), Good Cycles, The Centre for Contemporary Photography, Collingwood College, the National Gallery of Victoria, and The Social Studio.
